Leading to COP15: Understanding China’s position on Climate Change – An Edelman Paper

COP 15 is now few weeks (if not days) away, the clock is ticking. But the recent Singapore announcement did not help in bringing some hope, as, confirming doubts that had been growing for months, the world leaders in attendance at APEC — along with Danish Prime Minister Lars Lokke Rasmussen — announced that a legally binding deal on climate change would be impossible to achieve at the U.N. summit on climate change in Copenhagen.

With no tangible COP15 outcome in sight, many eyes have turned to look at China, whose position on climate change got widely debated. But often, as many other commentators noted (here and here), much of this debate has been based on misinterpretations of the domestic drivers behind the climate change issue in China.

Therefore, with my colleagues at Edelman Shanghai, we developed an Insights Paper on China’s position on climate change (that you can download here) with the aim of providing a more “holistic” picture of what the issues are on the ground in China, how these are influencing China’s climate change diplomacy, and how, from a communications perspective, better engaging Chinese stakeholders (government, consumers, companies) on this issue by actually re-framing the debate (and the terms of the debate, for a deeper analysis, check this out).

I don’t usually publish agency or client-related content on Sustainability Conversations, but the aim of this blog is to take part to existing conversations and share insights, and COP15 is for sure part of this. Of course, please let me, and my colleague @ilsevs, know your comments and thoughts on this paper.

Thanks again to all the people who contributed time and insights to this project (here, here, here and there) and furthered (I hope!) our understanding of a critical, yet extremely complex issue.

To download the Insights Paper, please click on the picture above or here.