China wants binding climate agreement in Mexico

China backs a climate change accord struck at a contentious summit late last year and wants a binding global agreement from talks culminating in Mexico later this year, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao has said.
The Chinese leader endorsed the "Copenhagen Accord" in letters on January 29 to the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Danish Lars Lokke Rasmussen, whose country hosted the rancorous summit that produced the controversial, last-minute document on fighting global warming, the official Chinese Xinhua news agency reported on Monday (Source: Reuters)

Since then, China and over other 50 nations have outlined their plans for reducing greenhouse gases and addressing climate change under a January 31 deadline, aiming to set in motion negotiations seeking a full pact in Mexico late in 2010.
In its submission, China repeated what it calls a voluntary domestic goal to cut the amount of the main greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, produced for every unit of economic output by 40 to 45 percent by 2020, compared to levels in 2005.
This "carbon intensity" goal would let China's greenhouse gas emissions keep rising, but more slowly than economic growth.
But Beijing's official submission did not mention the Copenhagen Accord, which was thrashed out after sometimes bitter negotiations in which China, the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases from human activity, was accused by some negotiators of frustrating stronger agreement.
The U.N. had asked all to take sides on the Accord by January 31.
Now Premier Wen has publicly backed the Accord, and said his country wants a binding deal to emerge in Mexico -- a goal that many observers say will be difficult to achieve.
"(Wen) stated that China positively assesses and supports the Copenhagen Accord," said the Xinhua report, citing his letters to Ban and Rasmussen.
China wants the negotiations culminating in Mexico to "reach a comprehensive, effective and binding outcome," the report cited Wen as saying.
But Wen stressed that outcome should be bound to a UN convention and to the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty governing countries' duties to fight global warming that runs until the end of 2012.
Those agreements say that developing countries, including China, should not shoulder the same absolute goals to cut greenhouse emissions that apply to rich countries.
As the world's biggest emitter, China has faced growing pressure from developed countries and some poor ones to set firmer and deeper goals to curb its greenhouse gases.
China says that its emissions have historically been much lower than the developed world's, and its emissions per capita are still much lower than those of wealthy societies.