In a fresh push to break the deadlock in negotiations in Cancun, China said it was willing to incorporate its domestic emissions reduction effort in the international climate change framework.
The proposal was announced yesterday by the country's top climate official, National Development and Reform Commission deputy director Xie Zhenhua, at the UN climate change talks, where little progress has been made with the talks into their second week at the Mexican beach resort.
While a senior Chinese negotiator called the move a compromise, Xie also spelled out conditions, mostly targeting industrialised nations.
'Developing countries may voluntarily use their own resources to make their own voluntary emissions commitments, and they should be under the convention,' Xie said at the first official briefing hosted by the Chinese delegation at Cancun.
The climate talks in Cancun have been shrouded in pessimism, with hopes of reaching a legally binding treaty fading after the failed Copenhagen summit last year and the prospects for modest progress in doubt last week, following a fresh row over the extension of the Kyoto Protocol, the first commitment period of which expires in 2012.
Ministers from more than 170 nations will gather in Cancun today for a high-level meeting in a last attempt to hammer out some sort of agreement as a stepping stone towards a binding treaty next year.
Huang Huikang , the Foreign Ministry's special representative for climate talks, said the offer to bring China's domestic pledge on carbon emissions reduction into the international framework was a compromise that Beijing hoped would push developed countries to accept the extension of the Kyoto pact, the only legally binding treaty tackling global warming. 'Under the [UN Climate] Convention, we can even have a legally binding decision,' Huang said. 'We can discuss the specific form. We can make our efforts a part of international efforts.'