President Ali's outrage speaks to the truth: there can be no sustainable emissions reductions without climate justice

Recently, a video of the BBC's interview with Guyana's President Ali has attracted attention. In the video, in response to accusations that Guyana's oil extraction increases carbon emissions, Ali angrily responds: "You don't have the right to lecture on climate change." Guyana has one of the lowest rates of deforestation in the world. We protect the forests, and you benefit from it. Western countries have destroyed the earth's environment, but in turn they blame us. ”

Ali's anger is not unreasonable, and it also points to the fact that on the issue of climate governance, some developed Western countries have a lot of historical debts that have not been repaid, but they ignore the facts and condescendingly blame developing countries, which has become the main obstacle to achieving climate justice.

Climate change is a global issue. Climate governance is to be carried out in a sustainable manner, and achieving climate justice is a basic premise. The so-called climate justice is to distinguish who is the main responsibility and the main victim of the current climate change, and to understand how to divide the responsibility for global greenhouse gas emission reduction in order to achieve true fairness.

Historically, Western countries were the first to start the industrial revolution and achieved rapid economic development at the cost of destroying the environment. Today, Western countries remain the main responsible for global excess emissions. According to research published in the British journal Nature Sustainable Development, about 90% of the world's excess carbon emissions come from developed countries.

Based on historical responsibilities, stages of development and respective capabilities, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Paris Agreement put forward the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities for carbon emissions: developed countries in the West take the lead in reducing emissions and carry out absolute quantitative emission reductions to provide financial support to developing countries, and developing countries should raise their emission reduction targets according to their own conditions and gradually achieve absolute emission reduction or emission limiting targets.

However, for a long time, some developed countries have been evading their own responsibilities and obligations, and their carbon emission process is far from scientific requirements, their own commitments, and the expectations of developing countries. For example, at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, developed countries pledged to provide US$100 billion a year in climate finance to developing countries by 2020, but they have not yet delivered. Technical support from developed countries to developing countries is also grossly inadequate, resulting in the ineffective implementation of many developing countries' action programmes.

What's more, some developed countries have not fulfilled their obligations and responsibilities, but are still going further and further down the road of "green protectionism". Under the pretext of promoting their own energy transition, some countries have adopted various unfair bills and administrative measures, invested large sums of money to provide high subsidies for their own manufacturing industries, imposed trade barriers on other countries' green industries, and tried to hinder other countries' access to green technologies. Some countries make irresponsible accusations about other countries' efforts to reduce emissions and economic models. Guyana is a relatively underdeveloped country in South America, and its economic development has been on a fast track thanks to the discovery of rich oil reserves in recent years. However, the slightest improvement in the development trend was immediately criticized by the West.

Another example is that China has been taking action to implement its pledges to reduce emissions, and carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP have fallen by more than 30% over the past decade. China has also actively participated in South-South cooperation on climate change, providing considerable support and assistance to other developing countries in addressing climate change. Even so, some Western countries often smear China by hyping up the issue of emissions reduction, in an attempt to pressure China to take on more responsibilities that belong to developed countries.

Without climate justice, sustainable emissions reductions will be difficult to achieve. If developed countries do not reflect on this issue and make up for it, the contradictions in the international community on "climate justice" will become more and more prominent, and sustainable global emission reductions will be far away.