This report provides a detailed overview of the national circumstances, emission levels, mitigation potential and measures for the major developing countries of Brazil, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea.These countries account for more than 50% of non-Annex I parties’ emissions.

The role of large developing countries in combating climate change will become increasingly important as the world negotiates a post-2012 agreement on climate change. This report summarises the activities undertaken by the BASIC Project (Building and Strengthening Institutional Capacities on Climate Change in Brazil, India, China and South Africa).

The second edition of the WISIONS publication ‘Sustainble Energy for Poverty Reduction’ describes a range of projects that contribute to this end. One is the community-based adaptation project Solar Pintadas.
The aim of this project is to support rural development and entrepreneurship by increasing agricultural production through an efficient irrigation system driven by renewable energy. The project achieves this by using photovoltaic and biodiesel water pumps to improve local irrigation systems.

The South South North network adopts a pragmatic approach to tackling climate change and sustainable development. This module incorporates the main approaches and provides a toolkit for practitioners wishing to implement mitigation and/or adaptation in communities in developing countries. These tools and methodologies are gleaned from a learning-by-doing approach from projects implemented in Brazil, South Africa, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Tanzania and Mozambique.
The paper describes six cross cutting programmes: 

According to this article, rising affluence in major developing countries (principally China and India) and increasing diversion of agricultural resources for energy production (United States and Brazil) sharply increase agricultural resource demand. Food consumption and production changes during development are analysed using resource-based cereal-equivalent measures. Diet upgrades to livestock products require fivefold increases in per capita food resource use, reflecting a consistent pattern that is only marginally affected by land base.

High upfront costs for renewable energy technologies further compound the problem. Failure to account for externalities, such as health or the environment, coupled with fossil fuels subsidies, distort the market to the detriment of renewable energy. Knowledge and capacity among potential renewable energy financiers are often limited, resulting in increased risks and elevated costs.

This paper considers whether the implementation of mitigation action (MA) policy in developing countries would be subject to similar impediments as other (non-mitigation related) public policy interventions. It focuses on case studies from Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru. Variables identified as having the potential to pose risks to the implementation of MAs include finance, technical capacity, vested interests, and social acceptance of the policies.

Refrigerators and air conditioning units feature high on the wish lists of people in hot countries. The International Energy Agency (IEA) calculates that by the year 2030 the energy consumption for air conditioning in developing countries and emerging nations will be four times what it is today. It is often the case that the gases used as refrigerants are produced chemically. They are damaging to the ozone layer and accelerate climate change. By contrast green technologies use natural gases in the cooling process, are more energy efficient and can be driven by sun or wind power.

Almost as much energy is used for refrigeration, air conditioning and insulation worldwide as for transport or heating. On behalf of the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the GIZ ‘Proklima’ project has now been working for some 15 years to help introduce environment- and climate-friendly alternatives to ozonedepleting industrial gases (such as chlorofluorocarbon, CFCs) in partner countries. Proklima thus supports developing and emerging countries in fulfilling their obligations arising from the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer.