At the recent Globe Forum For Business in Stockholm, Radio86 caught up with Dr. Mohan Munasinghe, Vice-Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), co-winner of the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace and Chairman of the Munasinghe Institute for Development in Sri Lanka.

Radio86: How serious is the climate change problem?

Dr. Munasinghe: I would say that the climate change problem is pretty serious. If you read the recent report of the IPCC, global climate change is certain and it is very likely caused by human activities. There are a number of serious effects that could happen within the next 30 or 40 years including warming of the planet, sea level rise, increasing storms and so on.

How do you react to people who say that the climate change issue is exaggerated?

Fortunately, there are fewer and fewer people who are saying that. They fall into two categories. There are people who are genuinely concerned that climate is a side issue which will distract us from more serious issues like poverty, malnutrition, ill health, and so on. To those people, our response is that climate change is not a problem that has to be addressed by itself. It is a problem that has to be addressed parallel with poverty, with malnutrition, and so on. So we must find an integrated solution that solves not only climate change but also problems of sustainable development.

The second group of people are, I would say, lobbyists or interest groups. They feel that whatever activity or industry they represent will be threatened by climate change and therefore their reaction is to oppose it. And to those people, I would respond that whatever activity you're doing will not prosper if you go into the world of climate change where there are serious disruptions, because it will affect everybody on the planet. Everybody on the planet should take this seriously and start working together to solve it.

What's the role of developing countries like China in climate change? In developing countries, there's the perception that since the Western countries caused climate change, they should solve it first.

Certainly, the climate change problem that we face at the moment has been caused by the process of the Industrial Revolution. It is the rich countries of today who have industrialized and put carbon dioxide in the air, and caused the problem. The countries who will have to face the the worst impacts of climate change are the developing countries, particularly the poorest groups. So obviously you have a question of unfairness there, that those who caused the problem will not be those who have to bear the brunt of the impacts.

Having said that, we have to understand that everybody on the planet is a stakeholder. The developing countries also have to help to solve the problem. Now, what we have in the climate convention is what we believe is a fair solution, in which the industrial countries who have the technical and the financial capability and also from a fairness point of view, having caused the problem, should take the lead in mitigation, that is reducing future greenhouse gas emissions. The developing countries do not have an obligation at the present time but there is an understanding that as they develop and become richer, eventually in some years, they will also have to think about mitigation.

You mentioned in your presentation that China seems to have adopted a political stance that if the US doesn't address climate change, then they're not either since the US is the largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But latest reports show that China is set to overtake the US. Do you see any change in the balance of power?

You're talking about the balance of guilt more than the balance of power. Not really, because the average Chinese consumer probably emits, I don't know the exact figure, maybe 1/10th or 1/15th of the per capita emissions of a person in the US. So if you go by the Human Rights Declaration of the United Nations where every human being has an equal right, then it will be many decades more before the per capita emissions in China reach anywhere near the US level.

Therefore the Chinese have a strong argument in saying that as long as they are facing low incomes, and low per capita emissions and low energy use per capita, then they have a right to develop. But that is not the only thing that they say. What they are saying is that the industrial countries (particularly the US) should show their commitment to mitigation by actually doing something. Secondly, what they are saying is that China and other developing countries will follow a development path which is different from the model of the West. So as they grow, their emissions will be less and therefore, they will contribute to mitigation in a different way, by following a more sustainable development path.

Will China have the political will to solve its problems related to climate change?

That is a question I cannot answer as a scientist; but, I, for example, teach a course for about 300 senior Chinese government officials every year. I have been doing it for four years. All the people who have attended have been very serious, very committed. I think China is making a very great effort to solve their problems of pollution. Their growth rate is so fast that it's inevitable that there is some environmental damage.

In fairness, if you compare the pollution levels of China today in terms of their growth rate and you compare the pollution level equivalent of, say, Great Britain at the same stage of development, maybe a hundred years before, we'll see that China is already much more aware of the problem and doing something about it than Great Britain ever did at that time. So that is progress -- that while they are going through a pollution-intensive part of their growth, they are aware of this and they are trying to take the best steps to avoid reproducing the pollution-intensive growth path of the UK and the US and other developed countries.

I wouldn't like to reflect on the political system because I am not a political scientist. But I would go on results because I believe that the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Take the case of population. China adopted the one-child policy and whether you say the government is communist or whatever, the fact is that they were very successful and they managed to control the population growth in a smooth way, without major disruption to the economy or to society.

Let's take a look at climate change. If you see the document on national climate change action plan which was produced last year for the Bali Conference, it's a remarkable document. It measures up to any of the policy documents on climate change produced by any of the OECD or Western countries, which shows very serious commitment. So the government, with the scientists and the growing business community, are managing to work together to come up with practical solutions to the problems they face. If the system works and, as Deng Xiaoping said, it doesn't matter if the cat is black or white as long as it catches mice. I would say that that is a very pragmatic way of looking at the problem.

Let's talk about population. You mentioned that as population grows, the demand on nature also grows. What could a country like China, with 1.3 billion people, do? It's not something they can change. Even though they have kept population growth low, the demand on nature will still increase. Can they mitigate this?

Yes, mitigation can take place in the following sense. For the industrial countries, what we are talking about is a reduction in absolute per capita emissions so that their total emissions decline. In developing countries like China, India and Sri Lanka, for that matter, we are not even considering a reduction in per capita emissions because per capita emissions are so low that if they reduce energy consumption, they will not develop at all. What we are talking about is that the growth rate of emissions will not be so steep as in Western countries. That means more carbon neutral growth or less carbon-intensive growth and so on. That can be done. Although, there is a huge population base, I think if you can produce each unit of GNP with less carbon emissions through newer technologies and newer lifestyles -- part of which will have to be developed in the West, but partly also developed in China, India and Brazil and the advanced developing countries -- I think the population problem can be offset by a more sustainable growth path so that the growth rate of emissions will be curbed.

Will sustainable development always come at the price of economic development or can they co-exist?

I think they can co-exist because when we talk about industrial development or development today, you have things like Information Technology (IT) and the shift towards services. Which means that you can leapfrog, you can avoid some of the most pollution-intensive and dirty phases of industrial development which Britain went through and which the US and maybe some of the other European countries went through. I think that leapfrogging is extremely important.

You have to have always a core of primary production, particularly, food. You can have secondary production, the industry and you need certain things like heavy metals, steel and cement and so on. But, if you can develop the tertiary sector, which is very much services-oriented and IT, you can sustain a high quality of life without the material-intensive aspects. That is what I think the developing countries should aim for. That involves some leapfrogging but also better examples from the West, so that the consumerism and the overconsumption in the West is not transferred to the millions of growing middle class people in the developing world.

Is it expensive, this move towards making development more sustainable? Is it going to cost the government and in that way, is it going to cost the people?

Depends how you measure cost. As you know, there's a conventionally measured GDP. There is also a method of calculating GDP as green GDP. That if you also estimate the environment and social damage that is caused by economic activity and you net out those costs. Then, although you may have a GDP growth of 10 percent if it is corrected for environmental damage, you may have a net green GDP of only 4 percent because you have lost 6 percent to environmental harm.

What we are saying is, instead of focusing on the traditional concept of income, focus on what you might be paying in terms of hidden costs. You might have a car, more money in your pocket, but you may be breathing bad air and paying a huge amount in health costs, which is a hidden cost. So if you factor all of those in and if you educate people, then people may make the right choices. They'll say, "Look, I might do with a little less conventional income, provided I can actually breathe cleaner air, the lake I am living next to is less polluted, and my community has less crime. So overall my lifestyle is better." That is the kind of thinking that we have to bring about especially among the younger generations.