Disappointment from last year's Copenhagen climate change conference is still lingering, and this year's Cancun meeting is imminent. Pan Jiahua, Director of the Institute for Urban and Environment Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that in light of last year's failed efforts, this year will see some more concrete results. He shares his views on prospects for the Cancun conference and discusses the predicament China faces in international climate cooperation. Excerpts follow:

In recent years, increasingly frequent extreme weather events around the world have put the issue of climate change under a spotlight. At the end of this year, the 16th Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Sixth Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will be held in Cancun, Mexico. As no clear roadmap for emissions reduction was hammered out at last year's Copenhagen meeting, pragmatism is key for this year's conference.

Being pragmatic will manifest in two ways. Firstly, people  generally have lower expectations for this year's meeting compared to last year, but that doesn't preclude actual positive outcomes. The lunch of $30 billion climate fund to developing countries between 2010 and 2012 as noted in the agreement reached in Copenhagen Accord is very likely to be realized. Once the $10 billion per year as pledged by devloped countries is put in place, it will help low-carbon drives and contribute to global green-house gas reduction in developing countries.

Pragmatism is also apparent in developing countries' increasing transparency in emissions reduction efforts. Scientific assessment systems are being established, which help to show these countries' determination to the world. Assessment results from these systems also incentivize developed countries, prodding them to take further effective measures.

But on some key issues like setting higher reduction targets, technology transfer and sharing information, major breakthroughs may not be at hand.

China faces some tricky problems in climate change cooperation. The biggest of these is the pending international agreement on its developing country status. According to the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities," developing countries may set economic development as a priority and then be given capital and technology from developed countries to supplement their low-carbon efforts. The controversy over China's status as a developing country directly impacts its reduction obligations.

Some countries, developed and developing, are ambivalent on China's status. They deem China as no longer a developing country based on the following facts: firstly, China has surpassed Japan as the world's second largest economy; secondly, China has the world's largest foreign exchange reserves; thirdly, China's fiscal revenues are increasing at a rapid pace of over 20 percent per year; fourthly, China's economic boom has produced many millionaires and the country doesn't seem to be lacking money.

But the fact is that China is still a developing country and needs to be provided capital and technology aid for its low-carbon development. In terms of GDP per capita, it ranks below the top 100. From a social development perspective, it is only near that ranking according to United Nations Development Programme's assessments. China's move to save energy and reduce emissions is of great importance to its sustainable development. Statistically, there are only 50 automobiles for every 1,000 people in the country. That rate is 6.7 percent of that in the United States, and 10 percent of the European Union and Japan. Oil imports make up 50 percent of its total oil consumption. In 2009, China turned into a net coal importer, which can only sustain the country's coal demand for 100 years.

China needs to tell the world that it's taking concrete moves to reduce green-house emissions. With a global issue like climate change, a single country's effort is always limited. Therefore, if the international community can join hands and help each other with technology and capital, emissions reduction work will proceed much more smoothly.