On the list of global polluters, China and India hold first and third, respectively, with the United States ranked second. Within the next 10 years, India has the potential to outrank the United States in overall emissions, putting Asia in a fog. It also has the potential, along with China, to prevent the entire globe from following its lead.
Or so says Bruce Gilley, a guest speaker at Boston University’s Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, as part of the China and India Comparative Seminar Series. In his Thursday talk, “Pathways to Emissions Reduction in China and India,” Gilley, a professor at Portland State University in Oregon, spoke about the ways China and India are “a big part of the picture, arguably the only part of the picture that matters” in regard to climate change and energy efficiency.
By looking at successful, local models of energy-efficient development in the Indian state of Gujarat and the Chinese city of Guangzhou, Gilley presented his theory of integrated governance. The recipe for success includes equal parts politics, policy and administration. The catch with developing countries, though, is that none of these are a guarantee, he said.
“When you move to the developing countries, the best policies may not have any political support, and the policies that do have the political support may be far from the best policies,” he said. “So with China and India, you need to think about the link between politics, policy and administration very carefully instead of just assuming that the best policy will always result in being implemented.”
But when it comes to green energy, developing countries have an advantage. China and India are still developing and still urbanizing, giving them the ability to do what those in the comparative politics field call “technological leapfrogging.”
“They don’t necessarily need to pass through the stage of dirty development because they have no technological choices available now,” Gilley said. “They can go straight from having no energy or no electricity in the average house to having only clean energy.”
In China, the main obstacles in the way of that development include lost political signals and a lack of capable administration. The Chinese government does not encourage policy innovation on the local level, said Min Ye, a Pardee professor and moderator of the talk.
“If they are really open, there is expertise outside the country or outside the system, and if they can be brought in, the social push could actually become more effective,” she said. “So policies are there, political leadership is there and the resources are there, but you need people to really implement them.”
What makes the case of Guangzhou unique in its success seems to lie in its identity as a global city. By paying less attention to Beijing and more to other cosmopolitan cities, it’s seeing positive effects. Buildings follow standards, air quality is improving, intensity of land use has increased and the projected emissions trajectory is on the upswing.
Like Guangzhou, Gujarat too has seen many recent positives: carbon dioxide levels have been falling since the 1980s, a massive solar energy rollout has changed energy sources since 2003 and cars there run on compressed natural gas. With India as a more pro-business state, Gilley explained in the talk, foreign partners and investors with corporate social responsibility laws have made more of an impact.
Only time will tell whether Guangzhou’s “state-signaling” or India’s “market-plus” approach will be more effective. The solid fact remains that climate change is more than simply an Asian or American issue: it’s a global one.
The talk’s discussant, Suchi Gopal, a professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ department of earth and environment, said during the discourse that “education is key. Through education, we can make the change.” Awareness among the youth, who make up the majority of the population in India, and the rest of civil society can take the tradition of activism in the country and use it for the cause of climate change.
Ye was equally optimistic, though she didn’t downplay the work it would take to get there.
“Climate change is really mankind’s thing,” she said. “So I think every American should be very concerned.”
