Introduction

Abstract

Climate change is commonly assumed to be a global problem that can only be addressed through global cooperation. Yet the reality is that only a relative handful of countries have the capacity to determine whether or not the world succeeds in avoiding the threat of dangerous climate change (Bulkeley and Newell 2010). Traditionally, these have been the United States, the European Union and other large industrialized countries, such as Japan, but in recent years, growing attention has focused on the climate actions of China, India, Brazil and other major industrializing countries. Although the per capita greenhouse gas emissions of these countries are still relatively low compared with those of industrialized countries (both currently and in cumulative terms), their high rates of economic growth and large populations have led to steep rises in their emissions, to the extent that it is widely acknowledged that effective action against climate change is impossible without the active participation of major industrializing countries. China has now replaced the US as the world’s largest single-country emitter of greenhouse gases and India is ranked fourth in the global league table of emitters (World Resources Institute 2010). Although Brazil’s emissions are more modest, it holds the world’s largest stocks of forest carbon in the Amazonian Basin and has the world’s second largest biofuels industry.