The Durban summit on climate change, to be held next month, is being viewed with hopes for a legally-binding agreement on reducing carbon emissions that ideally also includes a price mechanism for carbon dioxide, as stated by the China International Forum on Climate Change on Sunday.

The annual forum, co-organized by the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the International Energy Conservation Environmental Conference Association (IEEPA), aims at an exchange of opinions on policy across government and non-government organizations as well as with the private industrial sector.

All participants agreed that climate change tops the list of global agendas and constitutes the biggest challenge the human race faces, and that it has already shown its urgency through extreme weather and global warming. The global community has set 2025 as a date by which it has to reach certain objectives regarding reductions in global temperature and carbon dioxide emissions, and the summit is being viewed as a key link in the process of reaching these goals.

The lack of a standardized international mechanism and system for a market-oriented carbon emissions quota has become an obstacle to global cooperation on reducing the influences of climate change, analysts at the forum said.

“There should be a price for carbon emissions,” Edmond Alphandery, Chairman of Euro50 Group, said Sunday. Alphandery’s remarks echoed a prevailing notion, to be addressed at the upcoming summit in Durban, South Africa, that developed and developing countries should work together in policy-making and seek a mechanism to adopt market principles to green technology.

Liu Yanhua, Counselor of the State Council, said that a market principle is lacking in both a global and a domestic sphere.

“Under the Kyoto Protocol, we have some good trial procedures for carbon emission quota distributing and trading, but we can do more,” Liu said. “We’re currently in the phase of calibrating the mechanism and making rules for the carbon trade market. China will need this in international cooperation and also in domestic policy-making.”

“Who will pay the largest cost in reducing carbon emissions is a question as yet unanswered, but the answer will be found through a global cooperation mechanism,” Liu said.

The Copenhagen climate change summit in 2009 failed to reach a legally-binding agreement under the Kyoto Protocol, which accounts for why both hopes and frustrations are centering on the upcoming summit next month.

“Leading economies who refuse to contribute to carbon reduction will not prevent Denmark and the EU’s efforts to reverse climate change,” Friis Arne Peterson, Denmark’s ambassador to China and Mongolia, said yesterday.

“Whoever can crack the green code will win the market and profit, which is of great importance during this time of recession,” Peterson said, adding that Denmark has already benefited from curbing both domestic carbon emissions and also emissions in imports.