China to overtake US as world's biggest per capita polluters

China's swelling population is likely to become the world's biggest per capita polluters, a study has revealed.

According to a report based on recent results from the Emissions Database for Global Atmospheric Research (EDGAR) and latest statistics for energy use and other activities, China's carbon emissions for each member of its population could overtake that of Britain by the end of next year.

The 40-page report conducted by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment agency and sponsored by the European Commission, China already emits more carbon per person than France and Spain and on current trends it is likely to surpass the United States in per person emissions as early as 2017, the Telegraph reports.

"Due to its rapid economic development, per capita emissions in China are quickly approaching levels common in the industrialised countries," the report said.

"If the current trends in emissions by China and the industrialised countries including the US would continue for another seven years, China will overtake the US by 2017 as highest per capita emitter among the 25 largest emitting countries," it added.

Michael Jacobs, a former special adviser to Gordon Brown on climate change, has said that the findings would force China to begin to accept it could no longer be treated as a developing country when it came to climate change.

"China doesn't want to acknowledge that it's no longer 'just another developing country', but as its total and per capita emissions rise, it's inevitable that China will have to take a greater degree of responsibility both domestically and in the international arena," he said.

The sheer speed and scale of growth in China's carbon emissions threatens to call into question the credibility of the country as the de facto leader of the developing world in international climate negotiations, with India still only emitting 1.5 tons per person, the paper said.