Feature
12 October, 2009

The emerging powers behind G77 should admit they belong to a different league

When Cop 10 failed in Buenos Aires, December 2004, there were two culprits for the deadlock of climate change negotiations: the US and G77. Bangkok ended deadlocked last September. The main agents leading to the standoff were the US and G77. The US, however, had completely changed its attitude towards a global climate change deal.

Sergio Abranches

At the time, Italy’s Environment Minister, had proposed that the Kyoto Protocol be abandoned by 2012, if a new and broader agreement were not possible. It was an act of protest against US vetoes, and the announcement by the UK and Japan that they would not be able to meet the meager Kyoto emissions reduction goals.

Cut. Bangkok, October 2009. The last preparatory meeting before COP 15, in Copenhagen fails. Reason: conflict between the US and G 77, with China leading the confrontation for the “small states league”. The US was pushing  for a replacement to the Kyoto Protocol. The G77 defended its permanence. It wanted the maintenance of the Protocol’s outdated bipolarity: “Annex I countries”, with binding commitments, and “Non-Annex I countries”, with no obligations. US criticism of the Kyoto Protocol is fully correct and has the agreement of the European Union. Kyoto is outdated. It has never worked properly.

The G77 major countries know that this group of countries makes even less sense than the Kyoto Protocol. They argue that Kyoto would be replaced by a lax scheme, with no clear obligations and no guarantees. But that is what the Kyoto Protocol has become. What’s being proposed is quite different: an ambitious deal, with much higher targets for reducing emissions, including binding commitments for the emerging powers: China, India and Brazil, in particular. These big emitters are using a bad geopolitical fiction called G77 to evade their obligations.

COP 10 was held on a different world. The UK, then unable to meet the dismal Kyoto targets, is today ahead of most other European countries in its endeavors to mitigate GHG emissions. Japan’s new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, announced last September, at New York’s climate change summit, that his Administration will commit to a 25% reduction of 1990 emissions by 2020. In the COP 10 world, Japan was defaulting Kyoto. Barack Obama’s election has removed the US veto to an ambitious climate deal. For the first time there is a present and concrete chance that the US could have e federal climate change law.

Brazil had, in 2004, a per capita income of US$ 7,770.00 (by purchasing power parity criteria – ppp). Its Human Development Index was 0,775. Today, its per capita income is US$ 9,577.00, and its HDI, 0,813. At COP 10, in Buenos Aires, Brazil worked most of the time shifting positions as mouthpiece for G-77 with Tanzania (per capita income of US$ 580.00 -US$ 1208.00, in 2007- and HDI of 0,407 – 0,530, in 2009). That was signal enough there was something weird about this group of countries. Brazil and Tanzania have never had common interests regarding GHG emissions, or economic development issues. Their agenda was, and continues to be, totally different.

Brazil could only find itself at home among most of the G77 countries by sheer opportunism. The same is true for China. I’m talking about countries such as Tanzania, Burundi (per capita income: US$ 630.00, in 2004, and US$ 341.00, today; HDI: 0,339 e 0,394, respectively), Democratic Republic of Congo (per capita income: US$ 650.00 and US$ 298.00; HDI: 0,365 and 0,389), Ethiopia ( p/c income: US$ 780.00 and US$ 779.00; HDI: 0,359 and 0,414) or Haiti (p/c income: US$ 1610.00 and US$ 1155.00; HDI: 0,463 e 0,532).

The G-77 is one of those relics the United Nations preserves. It has actually much more than 77 states today. They are already 130. It might as well be called the G-130: a disjointed set of heterogenous countries created in 1964, in an even more distant world, of Cold War, communist countries, and latino military dictatorships.

Brazil was then a Third World dictatorship, with a modest and closed economy. China wasn’t even dreaming of a process of economic opening and modernization that would turn it into a powerhouse of the capitalist world.

Such a disparate group of nation-states has no capability to define a proactive agenda related to social and economic development, even less a climate change agenda. It is, by definition, a veto group.

Sociologically speaking this amorphous mix has countries with tiny populations like the Maldives’ 300 thousand people, and mega-populations like China’s 1.4 billion. It puts together urban and rural countries; industrialized and industrializing ones. Their per capita incomes vary from Zimbabwe’s US$ 261.00, to Brunei Darussalam’s U$ 30,000.00. What could those countries have in common?

When the G-77 was created, the Brazilian population was growing at 3% a year; the birth rate was on average 6 births per female; its urban population was only 50% of a 78.6 million population; infant mortality was 116:1000; adult literacy was 55%; and per capita income was US$ 1,400.00.

Today, Brazilian urban population is 85% of a total of 114 million people; annual population growth is 1.2% and the birth rate is under 2 children per female. Infant mortality has dropped to 23,6:1000, 80% less. Adult literacy is 90%. Per capita income has increased sixfold.

Changes in China have been even more impressive, although they don’t show as much because of the enormous absolute size of its population.

Brazil cannot keep hiding behind 120 poor countries to evade its responsibilities for global climate change. The same is true to China, and to India. They belong to a different league. One that the financial market has come to know as “BRIC countries”, the intermediate economic powers of today, the stardom of the emerging markets. These countries may become mega-economies, in less than three decades, and are already large GHG emitters.

In Goldman Sachs’s study, the economists who concocted the acronym “BRIC”, to refer to Brazil, Russia, India and China, estimated that in less than 40 years, their GDP would sum more that G-6’s GDP. Only the US and Japan would have economies as large as theirs. The US would be the second largest, after China, and Japan, the fourth, after India, but still ahead of Brazil, the fifth, and Russia, the sixth.

The BRIC league would grow from 15% of G-6’s present economic power to more than 50% by 2025. The growth rates necessary to achieve this status conform to a less than best case scenario. Brazil would need an annual average growth rate of 4%, over the next four decades, to get there. China would have to sustain an average annual growth of between 7% and 8%, over the first 10 years, reducing progressively to less than 5%, to end the period growing between 3% and 4%. India would have to grow by at least 5% every year during the next 40 years.

In spite of having around 15% of G6’s GDP today, they represent about 30% of global GHG emissions. Almost half of that emission comes from China. Even looking at per capita emissions, these three countries are much larger emitters that most of the G77’s 127 other nations.

We’ve got to separate the emerging powers from the smaller G77 countries. Those who belong to the G20, a geopolitical grouping that makes far more sense, and to MEF, the Major Economies Forum, created by President Obama, should leave the G77. The MEF will meet next November, in the UK, to try to solve the deadlock preventing an ambitious global climate change deal in Copenhagen’s COP15. It would be a good opportunity for China, Brazil and India stop behaving as small league players, and take obligations proportional to their actual size.


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