Taiya M. Smith is no longer with the Carnegie Endowment.
Taiya M. Smith was a senior associate in the Carnegie Energy and Climate Program and the Carnegie Asia Program, where her research focused on China’s climate, energy, and environmental policy. She has spent the last decade working in international negotiations.
Most recently Smith served as a member of Secretary Hank Paulson’s senior management team from 2006 to 2009 as the deputy chief of staff and executive secretary for the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In this role she provided policy and operational oversight for Department priorities and also managed the secretary’s relationship with China. As Paulson’s representative and lead negotiator in China, she led the U.S. government’s economic engagement with China through the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue and established the U.S.–China Ten Year Framework on Energy and the Environment.
Prior to joining Treasury, Smith served as special assistant to deputy secretary of state Robert B. Zoellick from July 2005 to July 2006. In this role, Smith was Zoellick’s policy adviser for Africa, Europe, and political/military affairs.
From March 2004 through July 2005, Smith was the State Department’s point person on the Darfur situation with responsibility for overseeing U.S. contributions to the African Union peacekeeping mission in Darfur, and was the U.S. liaison to the Darfur rebel groups. In this position, she traveled throughout Africa and Europe coordinating the international response to the Darfur crisis.
Smith began her work at the State Department as a Presidential Management Fellow in the office of Population, Refugees and Migration in 2003. She held positions in Accra, Ghana, and Abidjan, Cote d’Ivoire as Refugee Coordinator and in 2004 worked in the Democratic Republic of the Congo on the disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of combatants.
Before joining the State Department, Smith was a member of the facilitation team for the Burundi Peace Negotiations led by Nelson Mandela. After the peace agreement was signed in 2001, Smith advised the United Nations on implementing the agreement. She has also worked in India, Nigeria, and Cameroon.
While the United States and China—the world’s two largest economies—are becoming increasingly interdependent, there is a growing risk of misunderstanding or even clashes. The two powers need a dialogue to provide strategic vision to their relationship.
The Copenhagen Accord represents a step forward in dealing with the climate change, but two problems—the insistence on binding, internationally-agreed-upon targets and the conflation of the mitigation and aid agendas—should be avoided in the future.
With only a short time left before President Obama arrives to hash out major differences between developed and developing countries, the prospects for a climate change deal in Copenhagen look increasingly bleak.
India, China, and the United States have all made important political commitments at the climate-change negotiations in Denmark, but more work remains to be done before a legally binding agreement for developed and developing nations might be reached.
With leaders from around the world attending the international climate meetings in Copenhagen next week, including high-level involvement from the two largest emitters—China and the United States—there is renewed hope that some kind of agreement can be reached.
As the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China will be central to efforts to combat global climate change at Copenhagen and beyond.
President Obama will travel to Japan, Singapore, China, and South Korea starting on October 11. Carnegie experts will answer your questions about the possible implications and outcomes of the trip for the U.S. strategic and economic relationship with the region.
Much has been made about President Obama's upcoming trip to Asia as recent events on the continent—continuing uncertainty in North Korea, the violence in Urumqi, and the ongoing fallout in the wake of global recession—indicate that this could be one of the most important trips of his first year in office.
China has a unique role to play at Copenhagen: it is not a developed country nor is it simply a developing country, but rather somewhere in the middle.
At a special United Nations climate change meeting, world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Hu Jintao, tried to give new momentum to slowing climate change discussions.
