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| West outsourcing emissions: Study |
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| G.S. MUDUR |
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| New Delhi, Dec. 4: Industrialised countries are increasingly outsourcing part of their emissions of greenhouse gases to emerging economies such as China and India through global trade, a new study has revealed. |
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| The study by an international team of scientists has also shown that greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere have rocketed to unprecedented levels despite the global financial crisis (GFC) two years ago. |
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| Although the GFC did lead to a temporary dip in emissions from the industrialised countries during 2008 and 2009, emissions from developing countries continued to increase. The total emissions from fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and deforestation touched 10 billion tons of carbon in 2010, according to the study to appear on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change. |
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| The findings emerge at a time when representatives of more than 190 countries are meeting in Durban, South Africa, to seek strategies to curb emissions and mitigate the consequences of global warming. |
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| The new study has shown that emissions relating to goods and services produced in the emerging economies but consumed in the West have increased from 2.5 per cent of the share of rich countries' emissions in 1990 to 16 per cent in 2010. |
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| “The emissions from some rich countries are declining, but we also see shifts in their consumption-related emissions to the developing countries,” said Corinne Le Quere, a member of the team and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, UK. |
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| “The rich countries have to take some responsibility for clothes, furniture, or other products or services produced in countries such as China or India, but consumed in the rich countries,” Le Quere told The Telegraph over the telephone. |
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| “But it might be difficult to account such emissions,” she said. |
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| The study by Le Quere and her colleagues has shown that emissions have grown at a rate of 3.1 per cent per year since 2000. The researchers say this is a disturbing trend that will not allow the world to cap the increase in average global temperature at 2 degrees C, a critical limit that many researchers believe will be necessary to avoid catastrophic impacts of global warming. |
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| Scientists believe the new findings underline the need for the world to find ways to delink economic growth from emissions — not merely by expanding renewable energy and improving energy efficiency, but through even bigger challenges. |
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| “We’ll need alternative lifestyles — new ways of construction and new transportation, perhaps airships,” said Ashok Khosla, chairman of Development Alternatives, a New Delhi-based organisation promoting sustainable development since the late-1980s. |
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| Khosla said the outsourcing of emissions appears to be part of trends through which developing countries experience the environmental costs of products consumed in the industrialised countries. Forests may be cleared or soil nutrients may be used up in South America to supply livestock meat that goes into hamburgers in North America, Khosla told The Telegraph. |
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| Scientists believe the rebound of the emissions in 2010 to exactly the same level they would have been without the GFC is surprising given trends observed after tumultous financial events in the past. |
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| "The oil crisis in the early 1970s had led to changes in the type of energy used — a shift from oil towards natural gas — while the collapse of the former Soviet Union had led to a decrease in total energy use," Le Quere said |
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| "This financial crisis has not left any traces in fossil fuel emissions," she said. |
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| Many believe the GFC should have been an opportunity for countries to invest in low-carbon infrastructure, but emissions have risen to unprecedented levels. "These findings are truly shocking -- a global wake-up call," Julia Steinberger, an economist at the University of Leeds in the UK said in a statement on the study. |
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| Even the limp economic recovery of 2010 has put the world back on a "high emissions trajectory," said David Reay, senior lecturer in carbon management at the University of Edinburgh, in an independent statement on the findings. |
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| "For those striving for a breakthrough at the climate change conference in Durban," Reay said, "things just got even harder." |
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| Hotel industry moves to standardize carbon reporting efforts |
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Hilton, Hyatt, InterContinental and Marriott among global chains signing up to new carbon footprinting projects
30 Aug 2011 |
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| Many of the world's largest hotel chains have announced they will take part in a major new initiative designed to deliver carbon footprinting and reporting standards for the global hospitality industry. |
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| Hilton Worldwide, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, InterContinental Hotels Group, Marriott International, MGM Resorts International, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts and Premier Inn – Whitbread Group are among those to form a new Carbon Measurement Working Group under the auspices of the International Tourism Partnership (ITP) and the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC). |
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| The working group has been tasked with establishing a consensus on how to calculate and report on carbon emissions as part of an initiative to ensure that customers and investors can compare hotel carbon emissions on a like-for-like basis. |
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| David Scowsill, president and chief executive of the WTTC, said the new standards would build on the hotel industry's previous efforts to curb its environmental impact through green investments and the setting of carbon emission targets. |
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| "Through this initiative the industry is furthering its commitments to corporate and individual consumers by helping them understand their environmental footprint," he said in a statement. "A harmonised approach to quantifying and communicating the sustainability of the industry's products is a firm step towards accomplishing this." |
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| His comments were echoed by Stephen Farrant, director of the ITP, which was set up in 1992 to promote environmental responsibility across the hotel industry. |
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"Customers and investors rightly want to know about the carbon footprint of the hotels they are dealing with," he said. "The fact that 12 global companies in the international hotel sector have come together to achieve, for the first time, this degree of consensus on the complex issue of carbon measurement is testament to both the crucial importance of addressing the carbon issue and the success of the ITP and WTTC joint working group through this first phase." |
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| The working group said it hoped to complete the first phase of the project and have agreed standards available by next year. |
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| The group also revealed that the draft methodology it is currently working on has been developed with input from Greenview Consulting and has been reviewed by the World Resources Institute, suggesting it will draw on existing corporate emissions reporting standards. |
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