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News from Marrakech - COP7 |
Planet Ark: Reuters Environment News
The deal further increases the chances of
the protocol being ratified
by enough industrialised
countries for it to enter into force. It also
re-emphasises
the political isolation of the USA following its decision
to withdraw from negotiations in March.
"The
Kyoto protocol is saved," chief EU negotiator Olivier
Deleuze,
the Belgian energy minister, said. "We
have been able to remove the
initial reluctance
of certain countries [and] can now go back to
citizens
and tell them that, finally, action can start on the
ground".
Agreed in 1997, the Kyoto protocol
obliges ratifying industrialised
countries to achieve
an aggregate 5.2% cut in greenhouse gases against
1990 levels by 2008-12. After the previous round of
talks in July,
when several carbon sink "loopholes"
were introduced, the EU calculated
that the real
effect of the protocol would only be to require a 2%
emissions reduction. The Marrakech accord has trimmed
this further to
1.5%, European Commission climate
experts said today.
Saturday's deal was only made
possible after the EU made significant
concessions
to trenchant demands for more flexibility made by Japan
and
Russia in particular. However, the EU won a
condition that countries
may only use the protocol's
vital "flexible mechanisms" of meeting
targets through emissions trading and funding climate
gas-cutting
projects abroad if they accept its compliance
regime.
This means that if they fail to comply
with the protocol's strict
monitoring and reporting
provisions, or if they exceed emissions
targets
at the end of the first commitment period, they will
be
ineligible to trade.
On the other hand,
this compliance regime has as yet only been agreed
politically, with countries free to flout it without
fear of legal
action. Whether the compliance sanctions
are made legally binding will
be decided after the
protocol enters into force.
But in a concession
wrung by Japan, the eligibility to use the
mechanisms
will never be subject to legally binding sanctions,
essentially leaving it up to the conscience of individual
countries
whether they follow rulings by the protocol's
compliance board.
In a second major concession,
the conference agreed to double the
maximum amount
of carbon sinks that Russia can claim from 17 to 33m
tonnes. Japan also supported the change and is expected
to be a major
buyer of the resulting credits. In
addition, the conference agreed
that, for the first
commitment period, countries would not have to
prove
their sink accounting was satisfactory to be eligible
to use the
mechanisms.
Another thorny issue
was whether emission reduction credits could be
banked from one commitment period to the next. Under
the accord, those
from clean development mechanism
(CDM) or joint implementation projects
are "bankable",
while those from sinks projects are not.
The CDM
is now a reality under a "prompt start" after
its executive
board held a first meeting. Companies
can now invest in projects,
though emission reduction
credits generated from them can only be
bought and
sold from 2008, when a global trading system between
Kyoto
parties is due to begin.
Finally, developed
countries acceded to demands from energy-producing
countries to report to them on the likely impact their
policies to meet
Kyoto commitments are likely to
have on energy demand.
Japan has finally decided to ratify
the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas
emissions,
despite resistance from the United States and domestic
industries,
the government said Monday evening.
"I
hope not only industries but also each citizen will
cooperate in tackling
this issue," Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi said.
Environment Minister Yoriko
Kawaguchi urged big businesses, which have been
reluctant to implement the treaty, to cooperate.
She also suggested the possibility of an "environmental tax" on vehicle fuel.
The protocol is due to be ratified in the next Diet session, officials said.
When
asked about Washington's rejection of the pact, Kawaguchi
said she has
already informed the United States
of Japan's decision.
The treaty requires each
signatory country to achieve a target level for
greenhouse gas emission reductions. Industrialized countries
as a whole have
to reduce some 5 percent of emissions
from the 1990 level between 2008 and
2012. Japan
has to cut 6 percent from the 1990 amount during the
period.
At the recent 7th session of the Conference
of the Parties (COP7) to the U.N.
Framework Convention
on Climate Change in Morocco, Japan and other countries
agreed on how to implement the requirements. U.S. President
George W. Bush and
his administration pulled out
of the protocol earlier this year, saying that
the
reduction measures could harm the American economy.
The global warming treaty concluded early yesterday
in Morocco by 160 countries marked an important victory
for European and environmental leaders in rallying the
international community behind a document that was rejected
earlier this year by President Bush.
The groundbreaking treaty, the product of intense haggling beginning four years ago in Kyoto, Japan, would require about 40 industrialized countries to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.
The pact also spells out rules for compliance, sets binding penalties for countries that fail to meet their targets and creates a trading program that will allow major industrial polluters to buy carbon emission "credits" from countries with low pollution levels or that invest heavily in anti-pollution technology.
But in reaching agreement, European Union leaders were obliged to make last-minute concessions to Russia, Japan, Australia and Canada that added flexibility to the rules and granted added economic advantage. Japan insisted that negotiators wait until after the treaty is formally ratified next year before determining whether the emission targets are "legally" binding or simply "politically" binding, as it prefers. Russia extracted a concession doubling the amount of credits it could claim for its carbon-absorbing forests and agricultural land from 17.6 million tons to 33 million tons.
Many of the negotiators, environmental leaders and lawmakers concede that without the participation of the United States -- which is responsible for a quarter of all greenhouse gas emissions -- the treaty at best will have only modest impact for the foreseeable future. The World Wildlife Fund and others have estimated that the accord's effectiveness will be diminished by at least half because of the concessions granted and the withdrawal of the United States from the treaty.
"Without U.S. participation and with credits being granted for 'business as usual,' I think the reductions you get off the baseline are very small," said Eileen Claussen, president of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change. "Whatever short-term competitive advantage may result from the United States' rejection of Kyoto will be far outweighed in the long term by the harmful economic and environmental consequences of inaction."
Bush said in March that the treaty would impose too harsh a burden on U.S. industries and utilities that use large quantities of coal. He also said it was unfair that the treaty would exempt developing countries, including China and India, from the mandatory emissions targets.
Since then, the United States has essentially gone its own way, contemplating a number of voluntary measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions but putting forward little. Since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a Cabinet-level review of alternatives to the Kyoto protocol has been largely put on hold. Despite repeated goading by Republican and Democratic lawmakers to return to the international bargaining table, the U.S. delegation showed up for the Marrakesh conference beginning two weeks ago with nothing to offer.
"The big question now is how we bring the United States into the biggest international effort against the greenhouse effect," said Olivier Deleuze, Belgium's environment secretary and the head of the European delegation.
Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for global affairs, said recently that the United States was looking for a global solution to climate change, one that would be a "tapestry" of national and regional measures rather than the single worldwide system provided by the Kyoto protocol.
Yesterday, White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said Bush "agrees with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions" and "remains committed to addressing the long-term issue of climate change with a science-based approach that uses new technology to protect our environment, consumers and global economy."
But some argue it will be harder for Bush to continue charting his own course on global warming while insisting that U.S. allies support the war on terrorism and continued U.S. bombing of Afghanistan.
"After the events of September 11th, if there is any reason for the United States to call for international, global approaches, [it should also] join a global approach to the existing global problem of climate change," said Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk.
Claussen said Congress may have to provide leadership on global warming in the absence of White House action. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee Chairman James M. Jeffords (I-Vt.) is sponsoring legislation to force sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions from power plants, and Senate Majority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) is assembling an energy package that will have a strong emphasis on global warming. But action on those measures is unlikely until early next year.
"Obviously, the United States is the biggest contributor to the problem, and we owe it to the world" to take part in the treaty, a senior Senate Democratic aide said yesterday. "I think it's naive for us to think we can forever avoid participating in an international regime on climate change."
Every country in the world except
the US reached agreement this weekend on how to enforce
the Kyoto accord on tackling climate change.
Ministers
of 180 countries negotiated through Friday night in
Marrakesh, Morocco, on ways to ensure compliance with
the treaty, which commits countries to curbing emissions
of carbon dioxide and other gases that lead to global
warming.
Agreement was reached only after the talks overcame co-ordinated obstruction by Japan, Canada and Russia. President Bush pulled the US, the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide, out of the agreement earlier this year, claiming it might harm the US economy.
Margaret Beckett, Britain's Environment Secretary, said: 'This is the first multinational environment agreement with teeth, and it will make an enormous difference in reducing greenhouse emissions.'
French Environment Minister Yves Cochet said: 'There is agreement on everything by everyone.'
The agreement calls on nearly 40 industrial countries to limit or reduce emissions of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide from industry and cars - which scientists believe are raising global temperatures. The accord assigns each country a target, forcing it to curb emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2012. An enforcement system, with international observers and penalties, will be implemented if countries fail to meet their targets.
Negotiators were stuck on five points related to easing the reduction of emissions. Canada, Russia, Japan and Australia rejected a paper on how market-based mechanisms - trading rights to emit gases - would function.
The deadlock was broken with a compromise paper, which saved the United Nations' 1997 Kyoto Treaty. A sticking point was the issue of carbon 'sinks' - forests, grassland and other vegetation that absorbs carbon dioxide, and can be counted against a country's emissions reduction target.
Planting forests will allow developed nations to take less action to reduce the burning of fossil fuels. However, rich nations can also pay for forest-planting projects in the developing world to offset against their own emissions. There is concern the treaty will encourage the planting of huge monoculture forests that are bad for communities and wildlife.
European nations made substantial concessions to Russia, Canada and Japan to reach agreement. Russia was allowed to argue that its vast forests soaked up at least 17 million metric tonnes of carbon a year, thus sparing it the need to reduce its use of coal and oil by that amount. Russia will be able to sell its excess energy credits to Japan, letting Japan do less to curb its own emissions.
Environmentalists fear the treaty will make little impact on emissions. Beckett rejected these criticisms: 'You can always say "wouldn't it be better if?", but no one would have wanted us to leave without an agreement.'
The treaty must be ratified by 55 countries, responsible for 55 per cent of emissions. Most EU countries expect to ratify it in 2002. Kate Hampton, Friends of the Earth international climate co-ordinator, said: 'Drastic future cuts in emissions are vital to prevent dangerous climate change and this agreement is only the beginning. We will hold countries to their commitments and fight the use of treaty loopholes.'
The US says it recognises the problem of global warming, but wants to address it through its own domestic measures.
After four grinding
years of negotiations, the final details of a pioneering
treaty aimed at fighting global warming emerged from
talks in Morocco yesterday, and many large industrial
countries, excepting the United States, said they were
likely to ratify the agreement.
If enacted, and
significant hurdles still must be crossed for that to
happen, the treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol, would
set the first binding restrictions on releases of carbon
dioxide and other heat-trapping greenhouse gases by
industrial countries.
President Bush rejected the
treaty in March, limiting its reach by putting the United
States, the largest source of such gases, on the sidelines.
At the time, the decision caused some other countries,
most notably Japan, Canada, Russia and Australia, to
hesitate.
But after two weeks of discussions in
Marrakesh among this group, along with developing countries
and the European Union, the treaty's strongest proponent,
agreement was reached on a set of compromises.
"The Kyoto Protocol is saved," Olivier DeLeuze,
head of the delegation from the European Union, said
after the deal was announced.
Negotiations were
far tougher than those producing every other past international
environmental treaty, officials of many governments
said, because cuts in these emissions will come mainly
from restricting the burning of coal, oil and other
fossil fuels, the underpinning of industrial economies.
The industrial countries that sign on will be required,
as a group, to cut emissions by 2012 to levels about
5 percent below emissions levels in 1990. That shared
target will be easier to achieve, in part, because Russia
and some other countries, after the collapse of Communism,
saw emissions drop far below 1990 levels.
As happens
to most international agreements, the treaty lost some
of its initial vision over years of negotiation between
blocs of countries that would be affected differently
by its terms. For example, Russia, Canada and Japan
sought and gained substantial credit toward their gas
targets for the ability of their forests to absorb carbon
dioxide, the main greenhouse gas.
In telephone
interviews yesterday, American officials at the meeting
gave no sign that the Bush administration would reconsider
joining the effort. "Other countries have chosen
their path, and our answer is still no," said a
senior member of the American delegation.
Some of
Mr. Bush's critics in the Senate, most notably James
M. Jeffords of Vermont, chairman of the Environment
and Public Works Committee, criticized the administration's
lack of an alternative to the treaty. He said that Washington
"refuses to take responsibility for its share of
the problem."
Most climate scientists say that
a buildup of greenhouse gases has caused at least part
of the world's warming trend that could lead to droughts,
floods and agricultural disruption.
Mr. Bush has
said that the Kyoto pact could harm the American economy
and was unfair because developing countries like China
and India were excused from any obligations to make
emissions cuts.
In a statement delivered at the
closing ceremonies, Paula J. Dobriansky, the under secretary
of state for global affairs, said the Bush administration
was still committed to solving the problem, but in its
own way and at its own pace. "Climate change is
a serious issue that requires real action," she
said.
Nonetheless, the completion of the treaty
‹ even without the United States and with various
compromises ‹ still represented an important moment
in industrial history, environment experts said.
After a century of growing use of fossil fuels with
little regard for the impacts of a steady buildup of
greenhouse gases, many experts said, this is the first
global mechanism for limiting such environmental harm.
"It's by far the strongest environmental treaty
that's ever been drafted, from the beginning to the
end, from the soup of measuring emissions to the nuts
of the compliance regime," said David D. Doniger,
the director of climate programs for the Natural Resources
Defense Council, a private environmental group.
"The parties have reached complete agreement on
what's an infraction, how you decide a case and what
are the penalties," said Mr. Doniger, who attended
the meeting. "That's as good as it gets in international
relations."
Another innovation in the treaty
is its unfettered trading mechanism for greenhouse-gas
emissions. Until last summer, the European Union, driven
by strong public sentiment, had staunchly opposed allowing
a country to get credit towards its emissions targets
by investing in cheaper pollution cleanup projects overseas.
But under pressure from Japan, Canada and Russia,
that opposition faded in Marrakesh, negotiators said.
The goal of such trading is to foster international
markets for energy-efficient technologies, treaty supporters
said.
"The Marrakesh results send a clear
signal to business, local governments and the general
public that climate-friendly products, services and
activities will be rewarded," said Michael Zammit-Cutajar,
a United Nations official.
To gain legal force,
the treaty must be ratified by at least 55 countries,
including a group responsible for at least 55 percent
of the heat- trapping emissions from industrial countries
in 1990. With the United States out, that threshold
can be achieved only with the support of both Japan
and Russia.
Russia gave strong signals yesterday
that it was satisfied. In a statement made before the
meeting closed, Aleksandr I. Bedritsky, the lead negotiator
from Russia, said the agreement "opens the path
for the ratification by all countries, including the
Russian Federation."
Representatives of Japan,
where industries are fighting the pact, were more circumspect.
That hesitation is natural because Japan ‹ under
the arithmetic of the treaty ‹ will have to make
significant cuts in emissions domestically to reach
its target, said Dr. Richard L. Schmalensee, dean of
the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology.
Europe is in a better
position to meet its targets because it benefits from
the large cuts in emissions that already occurred in
Britain and Germany for economic, not environmental,
reasons. The Europeans took credit in Marrakesh for
leading on the issue.
Many officials at the meeting
said that Mr. Bush, who is dedicated to building and
maintaining an alliance against terrorism, was missing
an opportunity to seek an international approach to
the environment.
Dr. Schmalensee said the main
benefit of the treaty was not the modest cuts in emissions
it set, but the mechanisms and institutions it would
create. "It'll build some engagement and the habit
of compliance," he said. "This is a first
step."
MARRAKECH, Morocco (AP) - From insulation hidden behind walls at home to highly visible power plants outdoors, the first international treaty to fight global warming is poised to change landscapes, and lives, around the world - except in the United States.
In the final moments of a two-week conference in Morocco, negotiators from 165 countries agreed on hard-fought rules for implementing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which calls on about 40 industrialized nations to limit carbon emissions or cut them to below 1990 levels.
As a result, mountain ridges and coastlines are likely to sprout plantations of steel windmills. With nations under pressure to cut pollution, new cars, household appliances, even the simple light bulb will have to be designed to save energy.
And carbon dioxide - a substance we exhale with every breath - will be a controlled gas and a marketable commodity with a price.
Scientists believe the carbon that humans let loose in the atmosphere, mostly from factories and vehicles, has upset the natural balance, sending temperatures up and changing the climate. Already, glaciers are melting, sea levels rising and severe storms becoming more frequent.
The agreement on the Marrakech rules - scores of pages of complex legal text - cleared the way for the landmark treaty to be ratified, probably some time next year, and become binding law for its signatories.
The United States, however, has rejected the accord, calling it harmful to the U.S. economy and unfair because it excused heavily polluting developing countries like India and China from any obligation.
In Washington, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Saturday that President Bush took note of the rules agreed upon in Morocco.
``He agrees with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. His Cabinet review is under way, to determine a way that can be done without forcing America into a deep recession,'' Fleischer said.
Bush has said the United States will take independent action to combat global warming. He has set up programs to further study climate change and encourage research on new technology.
The Kyoto Protocol sets tough targets for slashing carbon emissions. Japan, for example, agreed to cut them by 6 percent from the 1990 level - but its emissions have grown by 17 percent since 1990, making that task far more formidable.
To ease the burden, the protocol establishes mechanisms to let countries partly offset their targets. They can earn credits for proper management of forests and farmlands that absorb carbon dioxide - so-called carbon sinks - and for helping developing countries avoid emissions.
The accord also allows for emissions trading, letting countries that cannot meet their targets buy the right to pollute from those that come in under their quota.
However, negotiators agreed that such mechanisms can only supplement real emission cuts - not replace them - and countries will have to adopt energy-saving measures to meet their targets.
That means old houses should have their electrical wiring redone, their windows triple glazed and their walls insulated to conserve energy. Solar panels may appear on more rooftops, and new refrigerators made to will run on one-tenth the energy of old ones.
The rules could lead to more public transportation and changes in city planning to scale back the use of cars. At the same time, hybrid autos using fuel cells already are on the roads, and car companies are researching engines that use less fuel and emit less carbon.
Many countries will set up domestic carbon trading markets where companies can buy and sell carbon credits. A similar U.S. market for sulfur dioxide was credited with helping reduce acid rain in the 1990s.
``Carbon will have a price. Until now, you could put as much carbon in the air as you wanted for free,'' said David Doniger of the Washington-based Natural Resources Defense Council. ``That's going to affect the way power plants are built and the way cars are being designed.''
Environmentalists say mechanisms like emissions trading are loopholes that have diluted the goal of Kyoto: to clean up polluting industries and reduce actual emissions. But they welcomed the Marrakech agreement.
The accord assigns each country a specific target, but the average is a 5.2 percent emission reduction from 1990 levels by 2012.
``Five percent is not going to be achieved, but that doesn't mean it's not worth having,'' said Bill Hare of Greenpeace, speaking Saturday for a coalition of environmental groups. ``This is a first step.''
The EU objective has reached its objective to make the Kyoto Protocol - the international framework to cut greenhouse gas emissions - operational. After two weeks of difficult negotiations, the 7th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change (COP7) in Marrakech has ended with an agreement on the operational rules to fight climate change. The package agreed upon includes decisions on compliance rules, the so-called "flexible mechanisms" and monitoring and reporting obligations for Parties. All Parties agreed that the package would be sufficient for the timely ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. The Protocol has to be ratified by 55 Parties representing 55% of industrialised countries' greenhouse gas emissions.
Olivier Deleuze, head of the EU delegation declared: "the Kyoto Protocol is saved. We have been able to remove initial reluctance by certain countries to recognise and preserve the Bonn agreement. We can now go back to citizens and tell them that, finally, action can start on the ground to put an end to the dramatic consequences of climate change, which are threatening the whole planet. The success at the Conference in Marrakech demonstrates that, despite the tragic events of 11 September, the international community is able to produce positive responses to global challenges. It provides evidence of the confidence of citizens and political leaders in the capacity of all countries to continue to work together to build a more sustainable future. "
Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström stated: "This is a milestone in the global fight against climate change. I am pleased to say that the long and bumpy road from Buenos Aires, via The Hague and Bonn, led to a success in Marrakech, despite the loss of a very important passenger on the way. We have now concluded four years of tough negotiations since the Kyoto Protocol came into existence in 1997. Now, we can commence a new journey to make the Protocol enter into force and pave the way for real action to cut greenhouse emissions. We need to travel at high speed. This is what people expect. Like the European Union, all other Parties should now take steps to bring the Protocol into force by the World Summit for Sustainable Development in September 2002."
Olivier Deleuze said: "Once again, the European Union has provided leadership in the international negotiations on the fight against climate change."
Commissioner Wallström declared: "Peoples across the globe have demonstrated that, facing the global threat of climate change, they want to join forces."
The most important achievements of COP7 are:
The Political
Agreement of Bonn in July was made operational. All
its provisions were translated into legal texts.
A solid compliance system has been established that will be put in place after entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol.
Rules and modalities on the Kyoto Mechanisms were decided that would allow the prompt start of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the start of Joint Implementation (JI) projects.
The international emissions trading can start as of 2008.
Monitoring and reporting procedures were established providing transparency and certainty for the operation of the Kyoto mechanisms.
Rules were set for the transfer of credits from sinks activities (i.e. in forestry and agricultural land-use).
Support will be given
to Least Developed Countries for the adaptation to climate
change.
The Accord reached in Marrakech proves
that multilateral co-operation at the level of the United
Nations can successfully address one of the most important
global challenges at the beginning of the 21st century.
The overall result also means that the fight against
climate change has entered a new phase. The EU stands
ready to take further steps after the entry into force
of the Kyoto Protocol in order to achieve the ultimate
objective of preventing irreversible environmental damage
from greenhouse gas emissions of the Framework Convention
on Climate Change.
The European Union was instrumental
in securing the deal in Marrakech. The negotiations
underpinned the leadership role of the European Union
in the fight against climate change, working together
with the Accession countries and other economies in
transition, and, in particular, the developing countries
of the Group of G77 and China. The accord of Marrakech
will also send a positive message to the World Summit
on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in
September 2002.
Negotiators in the
Moroccan city of Marrakech have reached agreement on
implementing the Kyoto Protocol on climate change and
global warming.
Working through Friday night to meet a deadline set by chairman Mohamed El Yazghi, delegates finally agreed the details of how the protocol will operate.
"There is agreement on everything by everyone," said French Environment MinisterYves Cochet.
The deal will be voted on by a plenary session of Kyoto signatories later on Saturday.
The Kyoto Protocol calls on nearly 40 industrial countries to limit or reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases - primarily carbon dioxide from industry and cars - which some scientists believe are rapidly raising global temperatures.
The
accord assigns each country a target and
sets an
average 5.2% emission reduction from 1990 levels, to
be achieved by 2012 - although environmental groups
say the reality is nearer 2%.
Key umbrella
One of the main sticking points has been the issue of carbon "sinks" - forests, grassland and other vegetation which absorbs carbon dioxide, and can be counted against a country's emissions reduction target.
With the US - the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gasses - definitely refusing to ratify, the support of Australia, Canada, Japan and Russia has become vital.
This tactical alliance is called the Umbrella Group, and it had been blocking agreements on certain key points.
Russia was allowed to argue that its vast forests soaked up at least 17 million metric tonnes of carbon a year, thus sparing it the need to reduce its use of coal and oil by that amount.
The exact details of the final deal are not yet clear, but it seems apparent that Russia will be able to sell its excess energy credits and that Japan will be able to buy them.
The EU says it will ratify Kyoto by 2002, but its support alone will not be enough to bring the treaty into force. For that to happen, Kyoto must be ratified by at least 55 countries responsible for 55% of 1990's emissions.
Bickering between 160 states on details of the Kyoto
climate
deal continued in Marrakech last night, even though
two weeks
of talks were due to have ended in the afternoon.
The meeting was designed to put the finishing touches
to the
political deal agreed in Bonn in June, in which all
developed
states except the US agreed to cut their greenhouse
emissions
to curb the worst effects of global warming.
The Bonn deal was hailed as a triumph of international
diplomacy. Outstanding difficulties were left to the
meeting in
Marrakech.
But the Morocco talks took a depressingly familiar turn,
with
Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia sticking out for
more
generous terms. Japan was concerned about some legally
binding conditions while the others wanted more credits
for
growing forests to trap carbon, rather than cutting
emissions
from industry and traffic.
Ranged against them were the European Union and the
G77
group of developing countries, including China and India,
which
wanted the cuts to be real and verifiable. Overall,
even if the
agreement is fully implemented by 2012, the reductions
will only
be about 3% of total emissions, a tiny amount compared
with
the 60% that scientists say is needed to avoid the dangers
of
runaway global warming.
The hope was that once agreement was reached all countries
could go ahead and ratify the deal before the "Rio Plus
10"
conference (marking the 10th anniversary of the 1992
Earth
summit) in South Africa next September.
The EU has already said it will ratify the deal, but
more than half
of the 180 countries which signed the original treaty
also need to
so before the Kyoto protocol can come into force.
Everyone involved accepts that the Kyoto deal was a
necessary
start to a process which will take 50 years of progressive
cuts to
get right. The US, the world's largest polluter with
24% of the
total of carbon dioxide emissions, has repudiated the
whole
agreement because it says the sacrifices it would have
to make
would disproportionately damage its economy.
All states hope that in the wake of September 11 the
US will
become less isolationist and take a more positive approach
to
the climate treaty, rejoining the process for the next
round of
negotiations for reductions up to 2020.
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to top
The European Union last night accused Japan of reneging
on past climate
change negotiations and thereby threatening to wreck
the United Nations
conference called in Marrakech to put the Kyoto protocol
in final form for
ratification.
Singling out Japan as the main obstacle to a compromise
agreement, a
senior EU official said it was "unacceptable" for Tokyo
to insist now on a
decision on whether the Kyoto protocol should have legally
binding
sanctions.
He claimed it had been decided earlier this year that
this issue would be
decided only after the treaty came into force.
As the two-week conference began to overrun its scheduled
end, the official
said: "If this conference fails, it will in large part
be due to Japan."
The EU had tried to meet Japanese concerns by agreeing
that the list,
decided in Marrakech this week, of possible sanctions
on countries
breaching their Kyoto pollution reduction targets would
not be changed or
increased at some later date.
Brussels had also sought to allay Tokyo's doubts about
being able to buy
pollution "credits" from Russia in order for Japan to
keep within its Kyoto
emission ceiling.
The EU had offered to give Russia technical help in
monitoring its
carbon-absorbing forest "sinks" so that Russia would
qualify for carbon
trading.
The US decision to drop out of the Kyoto protocol has
made Russia and
Japan crucial to ratification.
The protocol requires the approval of countries responsible
for at least 55
per cent of the industrial world's emissions before
it enters into force.
The European Union's 15 members and the dozen candidates
for EU
membership back the protocol, but only with Japan and
Russia can they
meet the 55 per cent approval threshold.
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to top
Delegates to a UN meeting on climate change
in the Moroccan city of Marrakech are pressing
on with their discussions to finalise the details
of the Kyoto Protocol.
This is the international treaty under which
industrialised countries would commit
themselves to legally-binding cuts in their
emissions of the gases which are believed by
many scientists to be warming the planet.
But one country which could yet block
agreement is Russia, which is playing a key role
now that the United States is no longer part of
the negotiations.
The moment President Bush decided the United
States would stay outside the protocol, Russia
stepped into the spotlight.
After the US, it is listed as the next biggest
producer of greenhouse gases in the
industrialised world. If neither Russia nor the
United States take part, the whole plan will
collapse.
Substantial concessions were already made to
Russia in the last round of talks in Bonn in July.
Forest sinks
Russia was allowed to argue that its vast
forests soaked up at least 17 million metric
tonnes of carbon a year, thus sparing it the
need to reduce its use of coal and oil by that
amount.
But now the Russian delegation is asking for
further concessions, and threatening not to
ratify the agreement unless the allowance for
its forests is almost doubled.
In his formal statement, the Russian
representative talked grandly of using national
potential and creating incentives for
sustainable development. But other delegates
are calling it blackmail.
The spokesman for the developing countries
said that Russia's demands were definitely far
too high. But it looks as if Russia will get an
increase in the allowance that it can claim for
its forests, just in the interests of keeping it
inside the agreement.
The problem is that every extra tonne of
carbon on the allowance allows the burning of
an equivalent amount of coal and oil, and that
giving way to Russia could open the floodgates
to claims from other countries. Russia puts heat on
climate treaty
Russia has a key role to play in global warming talks
By the BBC's Elizabeth Blunt in Marrakech
Delegates to a UN meeting on climate change
in the Moroccan city of Marrakech are pressing
on with their discussions to finalise the details
of the Kyoto Protocol.
This is the international treaty under which
industrialised countries would commit
themselves to legally-binding cuts in their
emissions of the gases which are believed by
many scientists to be warming the planet.
But one country which could yet block
agreement is Russia, which is playing a key role
now that the United States is no longer part of
the negotiations.
The moment President Bush decided the United
States would stay outside the protocol, Russia
stepped into the spotlight.
After the US, it is listed as the next biggest
producer of greenhouse gases in the
industrialised world. If neither Russia nor the
United States take part, the whole plan will
collapse.
Substantial concessions were already made to
Russia in the last round of talks in Bonn in July.
Forest sinks
Russia was allowed to argue that its vast
forests soaked up at least 17 million metric
tonnes of carbon a year, thus sparing it the
need to reduce its use of coal and oil by that
amount.
But now the Russian delegation is asking for
further concessions, and threatening not to
ratify the agreement unless the allowance for
its forests is almost doubled.
In his formal statement, the Russian
representative talked grandly of using national
potential and creating incentives for
sustainable development. But other delegates
are calling it blackmail.
The spokesman for the developing countries
said that Russia's demands were definitely far
too high. But it looks as if Russia will get an
increase in the allowance that it can claim for
its forests, just in the interests of keeping it
inside the agreement.
The problem is that every extra tonne of
carbon on the allowance allows the burning of
an equivalent amount of coal and oil, and that
giving way to Russia could open the floodgates
to claims from other countries.
MARRAKESH, Morocco (Reuters) - Energy and environment
ministers from around the world were locked in hard
bargaining on
Thursday, racing against a deadline set by the chairman
of talks on
bringing a 1997 anti-global warming treaty into force.
``The conference will finish its work on Friday. It's
desirable that it
should end in success, but if it is a failure it will
be declared on Friday
night,'' Moroccan Environment Minister Mohamed El Yazghi
told a
news conference.
A total of 164 countries have gathered in Marrakesh
for two weeks of
U.N.-sponsored talks to agree on the detailed rulebook
that will govern
the working of the so-called Kyoto Protocol (news -
web sites).
Signed in Japan four years ago, it is the first international
treaty to set
binding limits on countries' emissions of greenhouse
gases such as
carbon dioxide (CO2), blamed for heating up the earth
and wreaking
havoc on the environment.
The treaty, which requires industrialized countries
to cut emissions by
an average of five percent by 2012, survived the withdrawal
of the
world's biggest emitter, the United States, in March,
but has yet to
enter into force as the remaining countries squabble
over the legal fine
print.
Despite an apparent breakthrough earlier in the week
on ensuring
countries meet their pollution reduction targets under
the Kyoto
Protocol, the European Union (news - web sites)'s chief
at the talks
said ``the negotiations on the difficult points haven't
yet begun.''
Olivier Deleuze, who is also Belgium's Energy Minister,
said everything
was left to play for before the end of the meeting.
``I am not optimistic. I am not pessimistic. I am here
to negotiate. I am
here to be tough. The Marrakesh summit is one more in
a series of
tough negotiations,'' he told reporters.
One of the thorniest issues -- agreeing on what sanctions
to impose on
a country failing to make required pollution cuts --
was settled in
principle by government officials on Tuesday.
NEW ZEALAND TO RATIFY PACT
But nothing will be legally agreed until a formal sitting
of all parties
planned on Friday. And delegates said the tentative
agreement on
compliance could fall apart because of linkages with
other tricky and
highly technical issues yet to be solved.
One of these is Russia's demand for an increase in the
amount of
emissions reductions it is allowed to offset by counting
the carbon
stored in its trees and farmlands, a figure set out
in a deal made in Bonn
in July.
The EU has repeatedly said it will not renegotiate the
Bonn agreement
as it could open a ``Pandora's box'' of demands for
renegotiation by
other countries.
But Iran, the head of the biggest negotiating bloc,
the G77 group of
developing countries, indicated it might accept a change
to the Russian
numbers ``as an exceptional case.''
Moscow holds an ace card at the negotiations.
Following the U.S. withdrawal, Russia's ratification
of the Kyoto pact is
essential to make the treaty quorate, as it needs to
be accepted by at
least 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of the
world's CO2
emissions in 1990.
``There are some tough questions being negotiated and
some
negotiators being tough,'' Michael Zammit Cutajar, head
of the U.N.
climate change secretariat, told a news conference.
New Zealand became the first of the so-called ``umbrella
countries'' --
nations, including Russia, seen as Kyoto-skeptics that
used to negotiate
alongside Washington -- to announce its firm intention
to ratify the 1997
pact.
``We are the first umbrella group nation to have made
such a
commitment, although we confidently predict that we
will be in good
company before too long,'' New Zealand Environment Minister
Peter
Hodgson told the plenary session.
``The chances of the (Kyoto) Protocol coming into force
in South Africa next year are now good,'' he
said in reference to the World Summit on Sustainable
Development scheduled for September 2002 in
Johannesburg.
MARRAKESH,
Morocco - Harvests of some of the world's key food crops
could
drop by up to 30 percent in the next 100 years
due to global warming, a U.N.
agency said.
The grim prediction was made by the United Nations
Environment Programme
(UNEP) in a document released
in Marrakesh which hosts a U.N.-sponsored
climate
change conference.
The report said scientists have
found "evidence that rising temperatures,
linked
with emissions of greenhouse gases, can damage the ability
of vital
crops such as wheat, rice and maize."
New
studies indicate that yields could fall by as much as
10 per cent for
every one degree Celsius rise in
areas such as the Tropics.
It said that the Intergovernmental
Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the U.N.
team of
scientists that advise governments, estimate that average
global
temperatures in the Tropics could climb by
up to three degrees Celsius by
2100.
According
to U.N. scientists, current climate models predict a
global
warming of about 1.4 to 5.8 degrees Celsius
between 1990 and 2100.
The UNEP report said a second
group of the IPCC found that key cash crops
such
as coffee and tea in some of the major growing regions
will also be
vulnerable over the coming decades
to global warming.
"They fear that desperate farmers
will be forced into higher, cooler,
mountainous
areas intensifying pressure on sensitive forests and
threatening
wildlife and the quality and quantity
of water supplies," it said.
The findings on staple
food crops came from researchers at the Manila-based
International Rice Research Institute (IRRI).
"Billions
of people across the tropics depend on crops such as
rice, maize
and wheat, for their very survival,"
the report quoted UNEP Executive
Director Klaus
Toepfer as saying.
"These new findings indicate that
large numbers are facing acute hunger and
malnutrition
unless the world acts to reduce emissions of carbon
dioxide and
other greenhouse gases," he added.
MARRAKESH, Morocco - Government ministers from
around the world moved a step closer yesterday to
bringing a far-reaching treaty to combat global
warming into force after their officials reached a key
agreement.
Ministers were upbeat in addressing U.N. talks in
Marrakesh to define the practicalities of the pact
committing industrialised nations to cut their "greenhouse
gas" emissions by an average five percent of 1990 levels
by
2012.
Many were encouraged by a breakthrough in lower-level
talks late this week that put in place a system to ensure
that countries comply with their pollution targets -
previously seen as a stumbling block which could have
sunk the fragile treaty.
"The progress made thus far is solid and encouraging,"
Iran's Environment Minister Massoumeh Ebtekathe told
the
plenary session on behalf of the G77 group of developing
countries.
"The agreement reached last night is indeed a very good
outcome," she said.
The question of whether countries that emit more
greenhouse gases than allowed under the so-called Kyoto
Protocol of 1997 would face binding sanctions had been
thorny at recent similar forums, but many delegates
said it
now seemed settled.
"UNPRECEDENTED IN INTERNATIONAL LAW"
Environmental groups, which had accused Japan, Russia,
Canada and Australia of trying to wriggle out of a binding
sanctions regime for countries that miss their pollution
targets, welcomed the agreement.
"Binding consequences are definitely there," Jennifer
Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund said. "Countries now
know if they miss their targets there will be consequences."
Tuiloma Neroni Slade, Samoa's ambassador to the U.N.
who chaired the talks on compliance, called the compliance
system's strength "unprecedented in international law".
Ministers had agreed on the outline of a compliance
regime
at a meeting in Bonn in July, but squabbling in Marrakesh
over the legal fine print had cast the deal into doubt.
Stressing the importance of a climate change treaty,
U.N.
Secretary General Kofi Annan said the Kyoto process,
which was rejected by the United States in March, was
"a
victory for multilateralism"
"Indeed, joining forces against global threats to human
society and the planet has never been more important,"
he
said in a message read out to the conference by an envoy.
The United States faced a barrage of criticism when
it
pulled out of the treaty saying Kyoto's pollution-cutting
requirements for developed countries but not poorer
ones
would hurt the U.S. economy.
NO HINT OF A U.S. RETURN
U.S. Under-Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula
Dobriansky gave no hint that Washington would return
to
the treaty President George W. Bush described as "fatally
flawed".
"Our collective long-term objective must be to create
a truly
global approach that stitches together actions by all
countries into a tapestry of national and international
cooperation," she told the conference.
Without the world's biggest polluter, all other major
developed countries must ratify Kyoto for it to come
into
force.
However, delegates said several obstacles remained before
ministers could agree on a framework which would give
countries enough legal certainty to ratify the four-year-old
pact.
The European Union, a vocal advocate of Kyoto, has said
it
will ratify it next year.
But delegates from Kyoto sceptics Russia and Japan,
whose support is essential to keep the treaty alive,
have
said their decision on ratification would depend on
an
acceptable outcome in Marrakesh, where the two-week
conference ends on Friday.
U.N. scientists say global warming could entail disastrous
consequences such as floods and droughts, with current
climate models predicting a global warming of up to
5.8
degrees Celsius by 2100.
Ministers still need to agree on whether Russia should
be
allowed to make greater use of its carbon-storing forests
to
set against its emissions target than was agreed in
Bonn.
In a compromise to keep Russia and Japan on board after
the U.S. withdrawal, many countries were allowed a limited
amount of such "carbon sinks" under the Bonn agreement.
But Russia said it was treated unfairly and has asked
for a
much greater allowance, a request the EU said it would
oppose.
Story by Robin Pomeroy
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
The United Nations conference is attempting to draft the legal language to give effect to the Kyoto Protocol, which was signed in the Japanese city in 1997. This should pave the way for the protocol's ratification next year.
Delegates from the European Union and developing countries say they are upbeat on the key issue of compliance - namely the commitment by countries to stick to pollution targets and the penalty system for those that break the limits.
Kyoto would commit signatories to a cut in their emissions of greenhouse gases - believed by many scientists to be warming the planet - by around 2% on 1990 levels.
European Union Environment Commissioner Margot Wallstrom said the progress already made augured well for a full agreement to emerge by the end of the conference on Friday.
"The atmosphere seems to be good now that we have solved some of the problems," she said.
But the head of the EU delegation, Belgian Energy Minister Olivier Deleuze, warned against over-optimism, saying the deal was not yet in plance.
Binding sanctions
One of the major talking points in Marrakech has surrounded the issue of whether countries that emit more greenhouse gases than allowed under the protocol should face binding sanctions.
But this issue seems to have been resolved.
"Binding consequences are definitely there," Jennifer Morgan of the World Wide Fund for Nature said. "Countries now know if they miss their targets there will be consequences."
UN scientists say human-induced climate change could entail disastrous consequences, such as floods and droughts, with current climate models forecasting a global warming of up to 5.8 degrees Celsius by 2100.
Climate science
Not all researchers, however, agree with the UN assessment on climate change. They question the scientific underpinnings of much of the modelling work.
And, they argue, even if human-induced climate change is a real phenomenon, Kyoto is an expensive technical fix that may not even work.
The US, under the direction of President George W Bush, has already repudiated the treaty entirely, saying it would harm its economy.
US representative Paula Dobriansky said climate change warranted "serious attention and real commitment" but reaffirmed President Bush's position against signing the treaty.
"Our corrective, long-term objective must be to truly create a global approach that stitches together actions by all countries into a tapestry of national action and international cooperation," she said.
To enter into force, Kyoto must be ratified by 55 countries, responsible for 55% of emissions in 1990. This means that without the US - the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases - all the other big developed countries must be onside for the whole process to be carried through.
After clearing that hurdle, the negotiators on Wednesday handed over the final phase of talks to their ministers, to complete the landmark treaty.
Ten days of tough bargaining at the U.N. climate conference produced the breakthrough late Tuesday in the four-year effort to refine the Kyoto Protocol, the bedrock 1997 agreement by industrial countries to cut emissions of greenhouse gases.
Countries like Japan and Canada had sought to avoid a punishment clause in the treaty.
Several other contentious issues remained for Cabinet ministers and other policy-makers, who were convening for the final three days of the two-week conference.
By Friday, the legal text of the rule book for implementing the Kyoto treaty should be finished and ready for governments and parliaments to consider for ratification. Delegates said the agreement - the first compulsory treaty on the environment - may become international law by mid-2002.
The European Union issued another call on Washington to reconsider its rejection of the treaty, which President Bush has described as unfair and too costly for American business.
``We still hope the United States will come back into the process,'' said Margot Wallstrom, the European environment commissioner, admitting that a reversal of U.S. policy was unlikely anytime soon.
She said the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington might prompt the Americans to be ``more willing to enter into multilateral work,'' including on climate change.
The protocol requires industrial countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases - chiefly carbon dioxide from factories and vehicles - by an average 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2012.
The United States emits nearly one-fourth of the world's human-generated carbon dioxide.
But the treaty also provides mechanisms for countries to partially achieve targets without reducing real emissions. They may buy or trade ``carbon credits'' in the international marketplace, or earn credits by financing projects that help developing countries avoid adding carbon emissions.
Scientists say the accumulation of carbon dioxide is causing temperatures to rise, glaciers to melt and rain patterns to shift in ways that will disrupt agriculture and the world economy over the next century.
Legal experts exchanged handshakes and hugs after adopting the text on compliance, which had threatened to undermine the political agreement negotiated in Bonn three months ago and which had put Japan's ratification of the protocol in doubt.
Without the backing of both Washington and Tokyo, the treaty would have virtually no chance of ratification. It must be endorsed by 55 countries, including those emitting 55 percent of greenhouse gases in 1990, the accord's benchmark year.
Under the compliance accord, countries that miss their targets must make up the loss in the next period by cutting emissions an extra 30 percent. They also must submit a plan on how they will meet their requirements, and will not be allowed to offset the reductions by trading or using other mechanisms.
In a major concession by Japan, the negotiators agreed to recommend to a future conference that the penalties be ``legally binding.''
Today at the start of the Ministerial level of the Climate conference in Marrakech (COP7), the European Union stated its determination to reach decisions which will enable the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force.
“The European Union is determined to uphold the integrity of the political agreement reached in Bonn and calls upon the parties to respect strictly the Bonn agreement and to maintain the political consensus and the spirit of cooperation that prevailed at COP6bis. All the element of the Bonn Agreement must be faithfully translated in legal text.”, said Belgian State Secretary Olivier Deleuze, the head of the EU delegation.
EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström added: “ We are here in Marrakech to finish a job. Some intense negotiations still lie ahead, though. We are clearly not there yet. More work needs to be done on quite a number of issues. We are very pleased, however, that Parties were able to agree on a text on compliance yesterday. I was also pleased to be able to present the Kyoto Package put forward by the Commission last month to the Conference today. With this package we have confirmed our ambition to maintain EU leadership in the fight against climate change and our resolve to take action at home”.
The EU was instrumental in securing agreement during the evening of 6th November on operational rules for the compliance system, which will regulate the consequences for breaking the rules of the Kyoto Protocol. The EU believes that solutions can be found to the issues which are still outstanding. None of these should stand in the way of ratification, according to a united delegation. As the Environment Council confirmed in Luxembourg last week, the EU is already determined to go ahead with ratification.
M. Deleuze also pointed out that, for the first time, the COP meets on African soil. “As we all know, this continent, which is already seriously impacted by consequences of persistent droughts and desertification, is also likely to be among the most severely affected by the climate change”, he said.
Ms. Wallström said: “The tragic events of 11 September emphasise the need for coordinated, multilateral responses on issues which are impossible for countries to solve individually. Climate change is one such very crucial issue ”.
Outcomes from the Marrakech Conference will also include agreement on governance issues, i.e. the composition and voting procedures for the Joint Implementation (JI) Supervisory Committee as well as voting procedures of the Executive Board for the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). In addition, is foreseen the appointment of the expert group on technology transfer. They are indispensable to make the CDM and JI operational and to promote further actions in the field of technology transfer. Agreement has also yet to be concluded on the possibilities for using and swapping emission credits, including whether they can be carried over to future periods (“banking”).
Contact : Vincent Georis 0474 98 48 69
They say this is because these "carbon sinks" are themselves the product of temporary changes in land use.
They believe the entire land-based carbon sink could ultimately disappear.
The findings are important for a world keen to find natural methods of absorbing CO2.
The study, reported in the journal Nature, is especially relevant for the meeting in the Moroccan city of Marrakech of signatories to the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on tackling climate change.
Government ministers have taken charge of the negotiations at the meeting, of about 160 countries, which is due to end on 9 November with agreement on the protocol's detailed working.
Recent sink
Sinks soak up some of the CO2 emitted into the atmosphere by human activities (many climatologists believe CO2 and other gases are intensifying the climate's natural variability).
But exactly how much carbon they absorb is unknown. Scientists believe the land and the oceans together absorb about half the CO2 given off by the burning of fossil fuels.
The 30 authors of the Nature report say: "Atmospheric CO2 and oxygen data confirm that the terrestrial biosphere was largely neutral with respect to net carbon exchange during the 1980s, but became a net carbon sink in the 1990s.
"This recent sink can be largely attributed to northern extra-tropical areas, and is roughly split between America and Eurasia.
"Tropical land areas, however, were approximately in balance with respect to carbon exchange, implying a carbon sink that offset emissions due to tropical deforestation."
In North America, China and Europe, the authors say, the key factors were probably the regrowth of forests, often after farmland was abandoned in the 1980s and 1990s. A reduction in the frequency of fires also contributed.
Regional differences
Other factors probably include changes in foliage, plant litter and soil microbes. These in turn are affected by changes in photosynthesis, respiration, fire and insect outbreaks, influenced by climate fluctuations such as El Nino.
Growing trees absorb net quantities of CO2, and the higher levels of CO2 and nitrogen in the atmosphere are themselves stimulating tree and plant growth.
But the researchers expect these effects to reach saturation point and cease to have an effect.
They found big regional variations in the strength of sinks. Much of Siberia, for example, has warmed by about 0.5 degrees Celsius a decade since the 1960s.
An increase in wildfires and insect damage appears to have changed it from a sink into a temporary source of CO2.
World without sinks
In a possible pointer to future changes, the authors say: "Globally, there appears to be a net release of carbon to the atmosphere during warm and dry years, and a net uptake during cooler years."
The lead author is Professor David Schimel, of the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany.
He said: "Although carbon sinks have a role to play in absorbing excess CO2, it is possible that the net global terrestrial carbon sink may disappear altogether in the future."
Representatives from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) said common sense was at times sorely missing in documents being prepared for the ministerial meeting on climate change from Wednesday to Friday which will conclude the two-week Marrakesh conference, the first major international gathering since the September 11 attacks on the United States.
Non-bureaucrats and non-specialists were left out in the cold and the opaque language, not to say jargon, used at plenary sessions, workshops and in hundreds of documents was unlikely to be easily understood by the majority of people including the ones most affected by climate change, they said.
"There is now talk of privatising the air we breathe," said Tom Goldtooth of the U.S.-based Indigenous Environmental Network, in reference to an "emissions trading" scheme being planned.
The scheme is part of the Kyoto Protocol's "flexible mechanisms" and would allow one country to buy the right to emit from another country which has alrady reduced its emissions sufficiently and has therefore "spare" emissions reductions.
TRADE AIR?
The Kyoto Protocol, forged in 1997 in Japan, seeks to cut emissions of greenhouse gases - gases that trap heat in the earth's atmosphere - by about five percent from 1990 levels by 2012.
It will go into force once ratified by 55 countries responsible for 55 percent of carbom dioxide emisssions in 1990. So far, 40 countries have ratified it, 39 of them non-industrialised nations.
"With emissions trading, corporations have found a new way of continuing their ruthless commodification of nature," said Goldtooth, a native American. "They've lost touch with real issues that affect people. In my language, it is hard for people to understand what it means to trade air".
He and other representatives of indigenous peoples deplored that the world's 350 million indigenous peoples still had no voice at the U.N. climate talks, unlike at other U.N. forums.
Sounding a more favourable note, Mark Kenber of the World Wildlife Fund said emission trading was not the evil capitalistic scheme presented by some.
"If emission trading delivers what you want it to deliver one would be in favour, but if it does not do that and expands the loopholes that exist, we would be against it," he said at a workshop on the sidelines of the conference.
Speaking at a news conference, the NGOs' representatives gathered under a broad-based coalition called Climate Justice insisted on the need for big corporations to effectively adhere to guidelines that would protect the environment.
"Only 122 companies in the world are responsible for 80 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions," said Amit Srivastava, of San Francisco-based CorpWatch. "And just four private global oil corporations produce 10 percent of all CO2 emissions".
Advocates of the Kyoto Protocol, which the United States denounced last March as "fatally flawed" and harmful to its economy, agree it will not solve all environmental problems but hope it will set up a compulsory framework on which to build in the next decades.
The Marrakesh meeting, attended by some 2,500 delegates, is known as the COP7, the seventh conference of the parties to a U.N. treaty signed at the first Earth Summit in 1992 in Rio de Janeiro.
Story by Gilles Trequesser
While officials from some 160 countries meeting in Marrakesh grappled with the fineprint of a 1997 treaty aimed at cutting the "greenhouse gases" blamed for global warming, banks, energy companies and manuafacturers were already eyeing ways to cut costs - or even make money - out of the climate pact. Seventeen companies including oil giant BP , Japan's Mitsubishi Corp and German utility RWE , have joined a scheme to test out the so-called clean development mechanism - one of the elements of the complex Kyoto deal that are being finalised in the Moroccan city.
In return for investing in renewable power projects in poorer countries, the firms will receive credits for the amount of carbon dioxide - the main gas capped by Kyoto - that would otherwise have been emitted through dirtier energy sources.
The firms hope an agreement in Marrakesh will allow them to use the credits to offset CO2 cuts imposed on them by their own governments. Better still, the rules might allow them to sell CO2 credits at a profit via a yet to be established emissions trading scheme.
NEW GOODS TO MARKET
"We are creating a new good that can enter the market," the World Bank's Ken Newcombe, manager of the "prototype carbon fund" (PCF) told a news conference on the sidelines of the negotiations.
"Emissions that our shareholders (the 17 companies plus the governments of Japan, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands) intend to purchase are destined either to help meet their targets ..or, as there are banks involved, they could inject them into global trade," Newcombe said.
The Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse emissions by an average of five percent of 1990 levels by 2012. The pollutants are blamed by many scientists for causing potentially disastrous global warming.
But the treaty also allows those countries to offset some of those reductions by investing in clean technologies in the developing world and by buying emissions credits from other countries that have already reached their targets.
The final rules of how these complex systems will operate are due to be finalised by environment ministers who arrive in Marrakesh next Wednesday.
Presenting the scheme's first annual report, Newcombe gave examples of where its $135 million resources were being spent - a plan to buy $3.9 million of emissions reductions over the next 15-20 years from two small hyrdo projects in Uganda.
He said this would probably result in an estimated buying price of $3 per tonne of CO2, a fraction of the amount western policy makers have said even cheap emissions reductions measures would cost in the west.
The European Commission has said such measures would cost "less than" 20 euros per tonne of CO2 saved.
This could mean a handsome profit for those companies investing now, if on a future emissions market CO2 credits change hands for that kind of money.
But Newcombe said that remained a significant "if" while increasingly governments were still haggling over the Kyoto rules which may yet create difficult emissions market conditions or fall apart completely.
"PCF shareholders are taking a risk," he said.
Story by Robin Pomeroy
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Tokyo has privately conveyed its decision to Washington, the sources said, adding Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi will visit the U.S. on her way to ongoing global climate talks in Marrakech to convey and explain the move in person because U.S. government officials have expressed concern over the development.
Kawaguchi will tell them Japan believes the protocol is the only international framework for combating global warming and that a new system to facilitate reaching reduction targets easily has been included in it, the sources said.
She will also stress there are economic benefits in implementing domestic anti-global warming measures in a bid for the U.S. to return to the protocol, which it ditched in March.
Japan wants to have the Diet ratify it during next year's regular parliamentary session along with a revised law to promote measures against global warming.
With Washington's emphasis on global cooperation following the Sept. 11 terror attacks, there is still hope the U.S. will reverse its decision to withdraw from the protocol and return to it, the sources said.
Japan decided to ratify it because many of its demands were accepted at the previous climate talks in Bonn and there is little prospect of the U.S. proposing alternatives.
The decision was made after the Prime Minister's Office and ministries of foreign affairs, the environment and economy, trade and industry agreed upon the ratification. On Saturday, Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka said Japan will make its own decision on how to deal with the protocol.
The government intends to come up with measures to support companies to voluntarily take measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions and new systems to promote the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), part of three mechanisms established under the Kyoto Protocol that developed countries may use to lower the cost of meeting their emissions-reduction targets.
The 12-day seventh session of the Conference of the Parties (COP7) to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change is now under way in Marrakech and is aimed at paving the way for bringing the protocol into force.
COP7 participants plan to adopt the rule book as a legal document that would allow them to implement the pact in 2002 as agreed to in previous international talks.
Meanwhile in Tokyo, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told a news conference Japan will do its best to ratify the pact.
''Japan basically wants to (ratify) the protocol, but it isn't that easy,'' Fukuda said. ''We'll try to get it passed.''
He added Japan will do its utmost until the last minute to urge the U.S. to return to the framework.
''There is this concern about whether (COP7 participants) can agree without the U.S., the world's largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO2). Japan will proceed with the negotiations (at the COP7), while asking the U.S. to make constructive responses,'' Fukuda said.
The Kyoto Protocol requires industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2% between 2008 and 2012.
It will enter into force after being ratified by 55 states, representing 55% of industrialized countries' CO2 emissions in 1990.
But the U.S. has not changed its decision to remain outside the Kyoto framework, a move announced by President George W. Bush in March.
Without the U.S., the treaty must be ratified by just about every other industrial state to take effect.
The two Australian companies are Powercoal and Centennial Coal Co Ltd , the company said. A company spokesman said this was the first agreement of its kind to be made in Japan.
The parties are working on finalising details such as the volume and price of the deal, he said.
"The companies have each offered to supply us with 300,000 tonnes of coal a year...but the final decision has not been made," he said.
Details would be worked out before the start of the sales contract which is April next year.
At a United Nations climate conference in December 1997, Japan pledged to cut emissions of six greenhouse gases, including CO2, by six percent by the 2008-2012 period from 1990 levels.
In Japan, about 90 percent of CO2 emissions derive from energy consumption.
Tohoku Electric, Japan's fifth largest power utility in terms of revenue from power sales, services the northern part of Japan.
Its shares closed at 2,135 yen, down 0.93 percent, or 20 yen.
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Big insurers and banks like Swiss Re, Munich Re and UBS told delegates at a United Nations climate change conference yesterday that they had already seen a huge increase in the number of floods and hurricanes. The U.N.'s top scientists have warned such extreme weather events could become more common because of global warming.
"The number of really big weather disasters has increased four-fold if we compare the last decade to the 1960s," Munich Re's Thomas Loster said.
"The economic losses have leaped seven-fold and the insured losses are 11 times greater."
A U.N. panel of climate change scientists has said the "greenhouse effect", caused by pollution trapping heat in the atmosphere, could raise the average global temperature six degree Celsius this century. The higher temperatures could disrupt weather patterns and raise sea levels, leading to more frequent natural disasters.
The financiers said climate change was not the only reason for the sharp rise in costs.
Increases in population and insurable activities in areas at risk from natural disasters were also a major factor, Swiss Re's Erik Schmausser said.
But the businesses - among the 180 banks and 90 insurance companies involved in a financial initiatives working group set up by the U.N. Environment Programme - said they supported the Kyoto Protocol.
"We believe climate change is happening," Schmausser said, based on scientific data.
The 1997 treaty aims to reverse the increase in emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide.
That treaty commits industrialised countries to reduce their emissions by five percent of 1990 levels by 2012, as a first step to much greater reductions the U.N. panel says would be necessary to stabilise the climate.
U.S. President George W. Bush pulled out of Kyoto in March, saying it would hurt the economy, but said he believed climate change was a threat and promised greater research into its causes.
Schmausser said the insurance industry feared the unquantifiable risk posed by climate change and wanted precautionary action now to stop global warming.
"It is not possible to quantify all the environmental, economic and social effects before taking action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Research can reduce the uncertainty but never completely eliminate it," he said.
While climate change increased risks, it also offered a whole new range of business opportunities, such as climate-related investment portfolios and insuring risks related to emissions trading, the businesses told delegates.
"Five years ago, climate change meant risks to insurers and banks," Schmausser said. "That's changed. It now also means opportunities."
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
Conference documents circulated at U.N. talks in Marrakesh showed Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia, less enthusiastic about the pact than the European Union, had proposed that rules to enforce compliance with national targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions should not be decided on until 2003. EU leaders have been trying to save the 1997 Kyoto Protocol since the world's biggest polluter, the United States, rejected it in March. They hope ministers from some 160 nations can agree a legally binding treaty when they gather in Morocco next week.
But some environmental campaigners, who see the pact as a vital first step in slowing climate change, said the sceptics were trying to retreat from a last-gasp compromise reached with the Europeans at ministerial talks in Bonn, Germany in July.
"They are going back on the decision of their ministers to adopt a binding compliance system in Marrakesh," Jennifer Morgan of the World Wildlife Fund told Reuters at the conference.
"O think they are trying to move away from a binding compliance system by delaying a decision as long as possible."
Officials from the 160 or so nations are in Marrakesh to finalise a treaty based on that Bonn political agreement so that their ministers can approve it next week and send it back to their national parliaments for ratification.
President George W. Bush withdrew Washington's support for Kyoto in March, questioning the science behind it and saying its binding targets could hurt the U.S. economy. He did, however, commit to tackling the problems of climate change.
Without the United States, the treaty must be ratified by just about every other industrial state to take legal effect.
CORNERSTONE
The Kyoto pact is the first treaty to set legally binding limits on emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases which trap heat in the atmosphere with what many scientists say could be disastrous consequences for the world's weather systems.
The legally binding nature of Kyoto - which commits industrialised countries to reduce their emissions to an average of five percent below 1990 levels by 2012 - is seen by its supporters and detractors alike as a cornerstone of the pact.
Under the Bonn agreement, for every tonne of emissions a country misses its target by, it would have to make up for the shortfall in a second commitment period, after 2012, at a penalty rate of 1.3 tonnes.
A country failing to comply would also lose its right to take part in emissions trading - a system of buying more virtuous states' "licences to pollute" - and other "flexible mechanisms". It would also have to set out an action plan demonstrating how it can get emissions down to meet its target.
Greenpeace slammed the move to delay a deal on compliance by the four countries which were allied with the United States when Washington was still playing an active part in negotiations.
"If there was one thing that remained in at Bonn it was compliance," the environmental group's Bill Hare told a news conference. "Virtually everything else was shot to pieces."
Story by Robin Pomeroy
By Nicolas Marmie MARRAKECH, Morocco — Technical and legal experts got to work Tuesday on the fine points in a proposed international climate treaty, but environmentalists were concerned a few industrial countries, including Australia and Japan, would backtrack on their support. The two-week conference that opened Monday culminates a four-year effort to draft binding regulations limiting the human contribution to global warming.
With the U.S. delegation observing rather than negotiating, committees met to hammer out legal language in rules that would govern how countries count, monitor, verify, and report the emission of greenhouse gases — primarily carbon dioxide from power stations and vehicles — blamed for trapping heat in the Earth's atmosphere.
Nearly 4,000 delegates from 163 countries and from nongovernment organizations were attending the conference, which concludes next week with a three-day meeting of Cabinet ministers.
The United States, which earlier this year renounced its signature on the 1997 climate change treaty reached in Kyoto, Japan, was the lone dissenter three months ago when 178 other countries accepted a political accord in Bonn on how to carry out the Kyoto Protocol's targets.
Environmentalists said they were now worried that several countries that reluctantly accepted the Bonn agreement may try to undermine that accord by diluting the legal text being drafted in Marrakech.
Australia, Canada, Japan, and Russia were singled out. Without the United States, the refusal of the four to ratify the Kyoto Protocol would threaten its prospects for entering into force. The treaty must be ratified by 55 countries, including industrialized countries that contributed 55 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in the base year, 1990.
Organizers hope that goal can be reached by next September, 10 years after the first action on climate control was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.
The Kyoto Protocol "must not be muddied with diplomatic double-talk and further weakened," said Bill Hare of Greenpeace, an environmental organization. Hare said Australia was trying to water down the binding nature of the agreements by changing words like "shall" to "should" throughout the text. He said Canada and Russia wanted to alter the Bonn agreement regarding carbon sinks — forest or agricultural land that absorb carbon and offset a country's emissions quota. And Japan was unhappy about any sanctions that could be applied to a country that failed to meet its obligations.
"Australia is the leader of the backtrack camp," said Jennifer Morgan, of the World Wildlife Fund.
The Kyoto pact calls for industrialized countries to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 5 percent from their 1990 levels by 2012. After that, further reductions would be negotiated and the list of restricted countries could be expanded.
The Bush administration believes the mandatory agreement would make U.S. industry less competitive by forcing power companies and manufacturers to use expensive fuels or adopt costly technologies. It also branded the treaty unfair, since it exempted developing countries that are heavy polluters, like India and China, from any obligation.
Australia continues to face world pressure to toe the line at crucial climate change talks in Morocco designed to sort out the language of the Kyoto Protocol.
The United Nations yesterday warned Australia against trying to gain further concessions on climate change at the talks.
Environmentalists today accused Australia of trying to water down the protocol, which it has yet to ratify, as officials represent the caretaker government.
Greenpeace environment spokesman Bill Hare, in Morocco for the talks, told AP the protocol must not be muddied with diplomatic double-talk and further weakened.
The government was trying to water down the binding nature of the agreements by changing the wording of the text, he said.
Conference president Mohammed Elazghi said cooperation was vital to head off future calamities.
"I believe with what happened in the world on September 11 showed us that multilateral cooperation is very important," he told ABC radio.
"All humanity must react as one whole family to dangers of all kinds, and climate change is not the least of the dangers facing humanity."
The UN yesterday said Russia, Australia, Canada and Japan were opposed to the wording of the protocol, which describes penalties for non-compliance as legally binding.
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change executive secretary Michael Zammit Cutajar said those countries, without naming them, had already won concessions enabling them to write off emissions and not dent long-term pollution.
Australian Environment Minister Robert Hill is not at the Morocco meeting but officials attending are trying to finalise the language of the protocol.
The government has so far refused to ratify the protocol on the grounds it does not include the United States or developing countries and needs further work.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, Australia agreed to limit its greenhouse gas emissions to eight per cent above 1990 levels by 2010.
The targets are not binding until it is ratified by at least 55 countries.
The meeting in Marrakesh began on Monday and continues until November 9.
Pop quiz : If Australia is not going to ratify the Kyoto Agreement, why is it present at these negotiations in Marrakesh?
Australia is breaching international treaty law with its insistence on mandatory greenhouse reduction targets for developing countries, according to legal advice to conservation groups.
The Federal Government will not ratify the 1997 Kyoto protocol on climate change without developing country targets. The legally binding protocol commits developed countries to reducing emissions by a collective 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2010.
But Sydney barrister Stephen Gageler, who advised the government on native title, said that under the 1969 Vienna Convention, parties to a treaty were obliged to refrain from acts which frustrated its objectives.
Mr Gageler said Australia's obligations stemmed from its 1992 ratification of the protocol's parent treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
An international alliance of peak green groups, Climate Action Network, released Mr Gageler's legal advice as the latest round of talks to bring the protocol into legal effect got under way this week in Morocco.
The talks are intended to complete the deal reached in Bonn in July, where Japan, Canada, Russia and Australia won concessions to claim credits for greenhouse gases absorbed in vegetation and investing in greenhouse-friendly projects abroad. The contentious issue of mandatory compliance with the targets was deferred until the protocol becomes active.
Australia says it will not ratify the protocol without the United States and targets for developing countries, particularly China and India, whose annual emissions will overtake developed nations within a decade.
But Mr Gageler said developing nations already had legal obligations under the 1992 Framework Convention, which were reflected in the protocol. They include improved emission inventories, public awareness campaigns and programs to reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.
Environment Minister Senator Robert Hill, who is not attending the Morocco talks, said Australia always maintained it would not ratify the protocol until developing countries were included.
He said Australia competed with developing nations for natural resource industries and there would be no global greenhouse benefit if industries relocated to countries without emission controls.
Anna Reynolds of Climate Action Network Australia said the government should notify the UN it was withdrawing from the 1992 treaty if it did not want to be a party to the protocol, rather than continuing to take part in negotiations on its terms and conditions. "They are trying to have a bob each way," she said.
In other developments, wind-power company Pacific Hydro and the Australian Ecogeneration Association, representing renewable energy and low-emission gas power generators, joined the Australian Conservation Foundation in a call to ratify the protocol.
Ric Brazzale, of the Ecogeneration Association, said the protocol would not render Australian industry uncompetitive. Roy Adair of Pacific Hydro said a tougher target for Australia would lead to major investment in new technologies and job creation in regional Australia.
On Tuesday night, participants will begin talks on rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol in three separate working groups.
Among the working groups is one on the so-called ''Kyoto mechanism.'' Details of the clean development mechanism (CDM) were to be discussed.
The protocol establishes three mechanisms -- the CDM, joint implementation and emissions trading -- that developed countries may use to lower the cost of meeting their emissions reduction targets.
One of the other working groups is on monitoring systems such as on the quantity of greenhouse gas emissions and the other group is to deliberate rules about measures to be taken against parties that fail to meet their targets.
The 12-day COP7 opened Monday in Marrakech and is aimed at reaching an accord to pave the way for bringing the 1997 Kyoto Protocol into force.
Participants in the COP7 plan to adopt a rule book as a legal document that would allow them to implement the pact in 2002, as agreed to in previous international talks.
The Kyoto Protocol would require industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions from 1990 levels by an average of 5.2% between 2008 and 2012.
Attention is focused on Russia, a key player in allowing the protocol to come into effect, as the upper limit on its use of carbon sinks -- carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption by forests to offset emissions -- remains contentious.
Other industrialized countries agreed on ceilings for their use of carbon sinks at the previous session of the climate talks. Only Russia filed a complaint to raise its upper limit from the proposed figure.
Details of the rule book will be discussed during working-level talks through Nov. 6. Participants aim to adopt it as a legal text at ministerial meetings from Nov. 7 to 9.
The protocol will come into force after being ratified by 55 countries, representing 55% of the industrialized countries' CO2 emissions in 1990.
But the United States, the world's largest CO2 emitter, has stuck to its decision to remain outside the Kyoto framework, a policy announced by President George W. Bush in March.
Even without the U.S., the accord could be brought into effect with ratification by other industrialized countries, including Japan, Russia and European nations.
Andrew Simms
Monday October 29, 2001
The world has just shifted on its axis, but not in the way you might first imagine. A group of nine islands, home to 11,000 people, is the first nation to pay the ultimate price for global warming.
For many years the most interesting thing to happen to the Pacific island state of Tuvalu was the sale of its internet domain name, .tv, for $50m (£35m). But, just as Tuvalu has traded in its virtual domain, it is about to lose its real one.
The authorities in Tuvalu have publicly conceded defeat to the sea rising around them. Appeals have gone out to the governments of New Zealand and Australia to help in the full-scale evacuation of Tuvalu's population. After an apparent rebuff from Australia, the first group of evacuees is due to leave for New Zealand next year.
Today governments will converge in Marrakesh for the first meeting since agreeing the Kyoto protocol on climate change; the scale of the challenge ahead is still emerging, as is the gross inadequacy of current plans. Tuvalu is paying for the rich world's experiment with the global atmosphere. At that price you could say that it has become the world's greatest creditor nation. Although a land of no mobile phones and one radio station, Tuvalu is literally going down in history. The archipelago may be home to only 11,000 souls, but on other islands another 7m are threatened. It doesn't stop there. Go further and in Bangladesh alone another 20m people stand to become environmental refugees.
New and old claims to nationhood are at the root of the conflicts through which today's global economic powers are reasserting themselves. But the impact of climate change means the familiar mental landscape of international relations could be turned upside down.
Several decades of dubious management of the global economy made whole parts of the world in Africa and Latin America synonymous with debt. However, the orthodox debt crisis will pale next to the scale of the emerging ecological debt crisis of climate change. Conventional debtors will become new environmental creditors and vice versa. And the world is not prepared for the implications.
At the least, a new standard of universally recognised global citizenship will probably be needed to deal with the loss of nations. That will need to be coupled with an inclusive plan to tackle climate change and a commensurate compensation framework. Eun Jung Cahill Che, of the Honolulu-based Pacific Forum, asks in relation to Tuvalu: "What will become of its territorial waters? What are the economic and security implications of disappearing exclusive economic zones? Can there be compensation for the loss of a country, its history, its culture, its way of life? How do you put a price on that?" For at least 200 years, two dynamics have driven the global economy. One is the enormous growth of material wealth underwritten by humankind's rampant exploitation of fossil fuel. The other is the relentless widening of the gap between rich and poor. Now, everyone from Tony Blair to the head of the World Bank and former head of the IMF, agrees that the rich/poor divide fuels conflict.
James Marriott, a writer, shows how brief the reign of the fossil fuel economy is going to be. His great-grandfather was the first in his family to smell petrol, and James's parents are the first, and due to climate change probably the last, generation to spend their pensions on international air travel. Costs and benefits in a warming world are grossly unfairly distributed. While countries such as the US enjoy a cheap fuel policy, the brunt of climate change - floods, rainstorms and drought - is borne by countries least able to cope - such as Tuvalu, Bangladesh and Mozambique.
Ecological debt - where the rich take up more than their logical share of a finite environmental space - gives developing countries the moral high ground in international negotiations. There should be no question now of poor countries giving one cent of unpayable debt service to any rich country creditor before ecological debts are reconciled. A realistic global deal on debt would acknowledge the logical entitlement to share equally the global commons of the atmosphere and the economic opportunities it brings, within a plan to reduce the emission of greenhouse gases to environmentally tolerable levels.
Rockefeller once said that the poor shall inherit the earth but not its mineral rights. He could never have guessed that the world would soon face a challenge so potentially apocalyptic, that giving the poor their rights would become the minimum necessary to clear up the mess and agree a global solution to climate change.
Andrew Simms works for the New Economics Foundation and is writing a book about ecological debt.
Compliance CAN’s most important message to delegates on compliance is simple: We need a final decision on the text here and now at COP7. And it must faithfully reflect the terms of the Bonn Agreement. CAN’s second-most important message is that Parties must continue the momentum to resolve the legal technicalities that will finalise adoption of binding consequences. It is known that binding consequences will be essential for the proper working of the Protocol, especially emissions trading and the other mechanisms. Let’s not pretend otherwise. The text on Compliance must: € Provide that the COP will adopt the text on procedures and mechanisms relating to compliance under the Kyoto Protocol. This is crucial because (1) the Bonn Agreement specifically requires it, and (2) it will create the possibility that the Parties can begin the necessary preparatory work to allow the COP/MOP to bring the procedures and mechanisms into operation. € Reflect the mandatory nature of the consequences of non-compliance contained in the Bonn Agreement. No negotiator should waste precious time by arguing that the mandatory tone of the present text be weakened. If Parties require any clarification on the relative powers of the COP and COP/MOP, they should address that by fine-tuning the decision text, not the annex. € Preserve the provisions for transparency and public participation, especially those establishing the right of NGOs to submit relevant information to the enforcement branch, and the public’s right to obtain all non-confidential information in an enforcement proceeding. These rights must never be subject to the approval of the Party concerned. The Kyoto Protocol must be stronger on public participation than international trade agreements. Anything less would set a shameful precedent.
Articles 5, 7 and 8 Key issues remain to be finalised at COP7 under Articles 5, 7 and 8 although much of the text on methodologies, reporting and review is well advanced. Many of these issues are cross cutting and will require a consistent approach across the working groups, particularly those relating to the mechanisms, compliance and sinks. In negotiating the final aspects of the Articles 5, 7 and 8 texts, parties must respect the spirit of decisions made in Bonn and not try to undermine it via backdoor or underhand tactics. Delegates should take care to examine the motivations behind interventions by Australia, Canada, Japan and Russia on this set of issues. When negotiating the articles, Parties must: € Finalise the rules for elaborating the assigned amount. This will be contingent on parties agreeing on the nature of the assigned amount, i.e. whether it will include units from Article 3.3 and 3.4 sinks activities and the mechanisms. € Be aware of the rules for the operation of the transaction log. It currently lacks a procedure for dealing with discrepancies. € Operationalise the sinks decisions agreed in Bonn in the texts of Articles 5, 7 and 8. Parties must decide on annual reporting of sinks activities under Articles 3.3 and 3.4 and ensure they are consistent with other reporting of sources. € Make annual reporting for sinks activities under Articles 3.3 and 3.4 to be an eligibility requirement for parties wishing to use flexibility mechansims. € Ensure that the Article 7 COP/MOP decision recommends a decision be taken by COP10 on the rules required for reporting under activities under 3.3 and 3.4. This will ensure the quality of all aspects of the annual inventory and serve as the basis for the sinks eligibility requirement.
CDM Decisions in Bonn closed the CDM to nuclear power and prioritised renewables and energy efficiency projects. However quality control of the CDM has not been guaranteed. Quality control can be assured through a decision in Marrakech which includes: € Maximisation of stakeholder involvement in the CDM project cycle including a formal procedure for managing complaints and objections. This must include a formal process governing NGO access to Executive Board decision-making. It should also be extended to the Joint Implementation Supervisory Committee. € Development and application of accurate and objective baseline principles combined with a separate process for determining additionality. € Delivery of a process, with the involvement of the IPCC, that creates definitions and modalities for high quality sinks projects in the CDM. The decision must ensure that crediting for sinks projects does not commence until such rules have been agreed at COP9. Rather than encouraging lowest common denominator environmental practice, environmental impact assessment for JI and the CDM should at least meet current minimum international standard practice as prescribed by organisations such as UNEP and the World Bank.
Emissions trading While continuing to agree that the use of the mechanisms is supplemental to domestic action, Parties in Bonn recognised that, if properly regulated, they may have a role to play in enabling Annex 1 Parties to meet their commitments. In terms of ensuring the environmental integrity of these mechanisms, it is essential that their use be conditional on the accurate trading of emissions, and that such trading does not further undermine the Kyoto targets. Therefore, to participate in the mechanisms (i.e. to use, transfer or acquire emission credits) Parties must meet all the eligibility requirements listed in the Annex to the Decision on Emission Trading. In particular these must include: € Having ratified the Kyoto Protocol € Agreeing to be bound by the compliance regime. € Fulfilling all the requirements under Articles 5.1, 5.2, 7.1 and 7.4 for all sources and sinks. These criteria must be applied equally to all three flexible mechanisms.
ith the United States in attendance but sitting on the sidelines, more than 150 countries begin 12 days of talks in Morocco today aimed at completing the rule book for the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty requiring cuts in gases linked to global warming.
The goal of many of the countries at the meeting, in Marrakesh, is to achieve enough consensus on details that the treaty can be ratified and enacted next year, the 10th anniversary of the Rio Earth Summit, where a previous, but voluntary, climate treaty was forged.
After that nonbinding agreement failed to achieve reductions in the gas emissions, countries began the protracted talks leading to the binding commitments outlined in the Kyoto accord in 1997.
But proponents of enacting the treaty are hampered by two things: persistent disagreements over how to measure gas reductions and levy penalties when a target is missed, and the rejection of the treaty by President Bush last March.
Several countries, most notably Japan, have said it would be difficult for them to ratify the agreement if the United States, the largest producer of heat-trapping greenhouse gases, did not join the treaty.
Japan plays a pivotal role. Under the complex arithmetic of the treaty, it takes effect only when it is ratified by countries accounting for 55 percent of gas that industrial countries emitted in 1990. Without the United States, almost any combination of nations can reach that level only if Japan goes along.
The two-week meeting in the southern Moroccan city of Marrakesh will seek to produce a legally binding document for industrialised nations to significantly cut greenhouse gas emissions in the next decade. But the United States, the world's number one industrial power and its biggest polluter, is unlikely to return to the four-year-old pact.
Here is a chronology of some of the major political events since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992.
1992:
June - World leaders end their Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro pledging to do their utmost to prevent environmental ruin and alleviate poverty.
The main achievement of the Earth Summit is a treaty to reduce emissions of "greenhouse gases" which help trap heat in the atmosphere and are believed to be a cause of global warming.
- Nations adopt 1990 as the benchmark year at the summit in which industrialised countries agree to take voluntary steps to cut emissions to that year's levels. Most countries, other than Germany and Great Britain, have failed to meet that goal.
Sep 30 - The U.S. space agency reports that the "ozone hole" over Antarctica grew 15 percent in 1992 and is now nearly the size of the entire North American continent. The Antarctic ozone hole, first spotted in 1985, is caused by the depletion of the Earth-shielding ozone layer which is eroded by human-made chemicals such as chlorofluorocarbons, known as CFCs.
1993:
May 20 - U.S. scientists report that they have invented a computer model for predicting the effects of global warming on crops and forests. They find that the growth rate of plants is affected by the amount of carbon dioxide in the air, by nitrogen in soil and by temperature and moisture changes caused by global warming.
Oct 20 - U.S. President Bill Clinton announces an ambitious plan to combat global warming. Under the plan, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions would be cut to 1990 levels by 2000 through over 50 initiatives affecting all sectors of the economy.
1994:
June 1 - The international environmental group, Greenpeace announces in a report entitled "The Climate Timebomb", that global warming is causing severe climatic changes and environmental disasters around the world.
1995:
Feb 3 - Only slight global warming has occurred in the last 100 years and there is no sign of it producing more hurricanes, tornadoes or other extreme climate changes, Accu-Weather Inc. says in a report for the Global Climate Coalition, a business trade association seeking a voice in scientific research.
1996:
Feb 20 - Environment ministers from the world's leading economic powers agree that developing and industrial nations alike must do more to battle global warming and chemicals that deplete the ozone layer after a two-day meeting of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development environment ministers in Paris.
Jul 18 - A pledge by major industrial powers to fight global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions from oil and coal wins wide support and is put into the official record at a United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Geneva.
1997:
Dec 11 - The world's first treaty to reduce greenhouse gases finally emerges after marathon talks in Kyoto, Japan. Under the Kyoto agreement, industrial nations are committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-12.
1998:
November - Around 170 nations gather at the United Nations global warming conference in Buenos Aires to discuss ways of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases by 2008-2012.
- Specialists from the U.S. and Canada tell the summit that global warming is killing the world's coral reefs, and with them the swarming sea life they shelter and support.
1999:
Nov 4 - Environment ministers from 173 countries meeting in Bonn end talks without any breakthroughs and with many difficult issues remaining unresolved. One involves the penalties payable if nations do not meet their pollution targets. Another is the extent to which nations will be able to pay others to reduce pollution on their behalf.
2000:
Apr 9 - Environment ministers of the G8 nations end talks calling for the early ratification of a global warming accord but paper over other differences on cutting greenhouse gases.
Sep 8 - Scientists from the U.S. space agency NASA report the largest ozone hole ever observed has opened up over Antarctica, a sign that ozone-depleting gases churned out years ago are just now taking their greatest toll.
Nov 25 - A two-week U.N. climate conference ends in failure in The Hague after a bitter dispute between the EU and the U.S. over how to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
2001:
Mar 28 - The U.S. abandons the 1997 Kyoto treaty on global warming. President George W. Bush opposes the treaty, saying it is against U.S. economic interests.
Apr 26 - The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly slams the U.S. decision, saying it casts doubt on Washington's reliability as a global partner.
July 23 - Environment ministers meeting in Germany, reach a last-minute compromise deal to salvage the Kyoto accord on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, despite the withdrawal of the U.S. from negotiations this year.
Aug 1 - Klaus Toepfer, head of the U.N. Environment Program, says the international pact struck in Bonn will serve as an important base for future agreements but will not reduce toxic gas emissions by the targeted amounts.
Oct 23 - The E.U. presents a package of measures on climate change, decisive to enable the Union to respect its undertakings under the Kyoto Protocol. The measures include a draft Directive on a greenhouse gas emissions trading system within the EU
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
The United States in March pulled out of the Kyoto pact - a 1997 international accord on cutting greenhouse emissions - after President George W. Bush called it "fatally flawed" and contrary to U.S. economic interests. "We'd wish they (the Americans) were not outside (the pact), especially after September 11," Environment Minister Mohamed El Yazghi told Reuters in an interview.
"Their interest is clearly not to be isolated but they run the risk of appearing to defend only their own interests," he said.
Yazghi will chair a meeting in the southern Moroccan city of Marrakesh from October 29 to November 9 where more than 180 countries will put the finishing touches to the U.N. Kyoto agreement.
Although world attention is on the fight against terrorism and U.S.-led military strikes on Afghanistan after last month's suicide airliner attacks on the New York and Washington, experts said environmental issues are here to stay.
The conference known as COP7 - the seventh conference of parties to a U.N. non-binding treaty signed in 1992 at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro - is expected to tie loose ends on the Kyoto Protocol following a meeting in Bonn in July.
The pact aims to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, which trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for global warming, to an average of five percent below 1990 levels by 2010.
El Yazghi said he did not expect the U.S. delegation to bring any rival proposals to Marrakesh.
"It's a wise decision, a political decision in order not to disrupt the agenda of the conference," he said.
He predicted, however, delegates would "try and convince" the Americans to reverse their stand on the Kyoto Protocol.
Countries accounting for 55 percent of industrial nations' carbon dioxide emissions must ratify the pact. The absence of the United States is particularly felt because it represents about a third of the industrialised world's output.
The minister was optimistic delegates would finalise details of the Bonn deal, including on ensuring compliance.
"I'm very optimistic because a lot of the ground work was done in Bonn," he said, adding the Marrakesh session would "translate into legal text" what was decided in July and allow countries to ratify it by next year.
Story by Gilles Trequesser
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol would require industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% between 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels.
Attention will be focused on Russia, a key player in allowing the protocol to come into effect, as the upper limit on its use of carbon sinks -- carbon dioxide (CO2) absorption by forests to offset emissions -- remains a contentious issue.
Other industrialized countries agreed on ceilings for their use of carbon sinks during the previous session of U.N. climate talks in Bonn, Germany, in July, but only Russia filed a complaint to raise its upper limit from the proposed figure.
Negotiations are expected to also face difficulties on whether to impose a binding penalty on parties that fail to meet their targets.
Details of the rule book will be discussed during working-level talks through Nov. 6, and participants are aiming to adopt it as a legal text during ministerial meetings from Nov. 7 to 9.
The protocol will come into force after being ratified by 55 countries, representing 55% of the industrialized countries' CO2 emissions in 1990.
The United States, however, the world's largest producer of CO2, has not changed its decision to remain outside the Kyoto framework, a policy announced by President George W. Bush in March.
Even without the U.S., the accord could be brought into effect with ratification by other industrialized countries, such as Japan, Russia and European nations.
This system is known as the clean development mechanism (CDM).
``I am well aware of the CDM and would like to cooperate,'' said Le Dung, deputy director general of Vietnam's Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment. ``We are interested in natural energy.''
In September 2000, Le held talks with Bunichi Matsuda, general manager of the overseas projects department at the Japan Energy Research Center Co., during Matsuda's visit to conduct a feasibility study for a CDM project.
Matsuda and his team of researchers were looking into the possibility of starting up a biomass project in Vietnam that would mix ethanol made from sugar cane with gasoline. The project aims to cut Vietnam's rapidly increasing consumption of gasoline.
According to Matsuda's calculations, the fuel mixture would lead to a 12 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions when compared with gasoline.
Many Asian nations are warming to the idea of CDM, which is expected to lead to the introduction of new technology and funds.
Of the 23 CDM project studies conducted by the Environment Ministry, 20 were in Asia. Fourteen involved reforestation projects.
About half of the 183 projects supported by the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry for studies of joint implementation projects are in Asia.
Chow Kok Kee, director-general of the Malaysian Meteorological Service, who served as chairman of a subcommittee for the Kyoto mechanism at the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP6), focuses on efforts by businesses.
``We look forward to seeing Japanese firms allow Asian nations to participate in projects involving CDM,'' he said.
Savings earned through CDM emissions reductions projects abroad are referred to as carbon credits. Firms can count these credits toward their reduction efforts, and surplus credits can be sold through an emissions transaction on the market.
If carbon credits start being traded as a commodity like gold and soybeans, analysts predict a huge market could emerge.
Firms that buy cheap carbon credits only to sell them off for a higher price would reap profits, and vice versa.
Two simulations of this phenomenon recently kicked off in Tokyo.
At the end of July, 22 firms, including electric power, automobile and steel companies, joined an experiment run by Mitsui & Co., among others. Virtual news articles, including reviews of the effects of forests on carbon dioxide absorption and the announcement by various nations of company emission ratios, were circulated on a Web site. Simultaneously, active trading in carbon dioxide began.
A ton of carbon dioxide on the virtual market sold for anywhere between 1,000 and 40,000 yen.
In a similar experiment, 33 firms, including banks and trading companies, took part in a virtual market set up by Natsource Japan Co. and Mitsubishi Research Institute Inc.
Natsource Japan was created as a joint venture between several Japanese firms and a U.S. firm that is the world's largest emissions trader.
Participants in the experiment said they got a specific feel for the kind of tradings to expect since each company used emission ratios based on actual financial conditions and energy consumption levels.
There are several ways companies can reduce emissions: through in-house efforts, by moving into CDM projects abroad or by purchasing carbon credits on the market.
Reducing the cost of cutting carbon dioxide emissions looks likely to become a top priority for many companies.
Many of the firms that joined the virtual markets were members of Keidanren (Japan Federation of Economic Organizations) that have opposed regulated emissions tradings.
But after Britain announced the formation next year of a trading system, and with carbon dioxide tradings already taking place, Japan has begun to consider setting up its own market, forcing companies to speed up preparations for such a situation.
The emissions trading market could reach an annual level of $200 billion (24 trillion yen), according to an official of Natsource Japan. Of this, tradings in Asia could reach between 7 trillion and 8 trillion yen, with Japan accounting for about 1 trillion yen.
(10/24)
Olivier Deleuze, the leader of the EU delegation for climate change negotiations and Belgium's State Secretary for Energy and Sustainable Development, said he was optimistic about the outcome of the upcoming Conference of the Parties to be held shortly in Marrakech. "The main aim of the Marrakech meeting will be to translate the Bonn agreement into a legal text and to facilitate, as quickly as possible, the implementation of solutions to the problems caused by climate change", Mr Deleuze said on Tuesday. He ruled out the possibility that Marrakech would be an opportunity to renegotiate the Bonn agreement, which was extracted after a protracted struggle to save the Kyoto process. He stressed the importance of combating climate change, especially for southern countries, where sustainable development "is not a luxury". The EU delegation, which also included Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström, will travel to Marrakech for the ministerial segment of the Conference of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol on 7-9 November. At the Bonn meeting in July, the 15 Member States showed that by facilitating the comprehensive agreement on the response to climate change they can play a leadership role in international negotiations, specifically by forging partnerships with developing countries. The Bonn Conference - like the meeting in Genoa - also proved that high-level international meetings can respond constructively to citizens' and NGOs' expectations. The Kyoto Protocol aims to achieve the objective of the UN's 1992 Framework Convention on Climate Change (Earth Summit), which is "to stabilise concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". The objective of the Convention is reflected in the Protocol as a quantified commitment by the industrialised countries (countries listed in Annex I) to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% compared with the 1990 level during the period 2008-2012. The EU pledged to reduce its emissions by 8%, the United States 7% and Japan 6%. The combustion of fossil fuels accounts for 90% of all CO2 emissions.
Contact: Vincent Georis 0474 98 48 69
The IPCC chief said major U.S. companies such as International Business Machines Corp. and Lucent Technologies Inc. have already committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions voluntarily. While other countries lead action to fight global warming, Watson said, U.S. politicians will come to think ''Why should we be outside the international regime?'' ''Some people have argued that President (George W.) Bush now needs the rest of the world to combat terrorism and therefore the rest of the world needs President Bush to help combat greenhouse gas emissions,'' he said.
In March, Bush announced his country will withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol, maintaining it will severely hurt the U.S. economy while exempting developing countries such as China and India from obligations to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Watson pointed out that economic impact will be minimal if countries make use of domestic as well as international emissions trading mechanisms and that it would be advantageous for industries to develop technologies to curb global warming at an early stage.
''Japan brilliantly, in my opinion, seized the opportunity in 1973, at the time of the oil crisis, to sell...fuel-efficient cars to the rest of the world. It was the time they penetrated the market in America,'' he said. ''So I would say to American industries, 'Do you want German or Japanese industries to produce energy technology for the future, or do you want to be part of the revolution?','' said Watson, who also serves as chief scientist for the World Bank. Watson stressed the need to raise the awareness of the U.S. public as well as politicians on the seriousness of global warming and to demonstrate economically that tackling the issue ''will not be destructive to the U.S.''
The scientist said developing countries cannot avoid obligations to cut their greenhouse gas emissions in the future and proposed that countries such as China and India strike a deal with industrialized nations on their future commitment, in return for financial and technological aid. Watson said he expects those developing countries to agree in the next year or two to have obligations, although it will likely take another 10 to 15 years before they actually begin seriously committing themselves to cutting greenhouse gas emissions.
A rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol is expected to be adopted and made into a legal document during U.N. climate talks scheduled to open in Marrakech, Morocco, later this month, paving the way for the pact's entry into force in 2002. The protocol adopted in Japan's ancient capital requires industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5.2% from 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The IPCC, based in Geneva, was established in 1988 by the U.N. Environmental Program and the World Meteorological Organization. Its aim is to assess scientific, technical and socioeconomic information relating to the risk of human-induced climate change. return to COP7 page
"There is a lot of work to be done. I am not complacent, but I am optimistic that there will be a good result. The political will to bring this phase to conclusion is there," Cutajar told a news conference. He predicted that enough countries would ratify the pact to put it in force despite President Bush's move earlier this year to drop out of the Kyoto accord.
Countries accounting for 55 percent of the 30-odd wealthy industrial nations' carbon dioxide emissions must ratify the treaty for it to take effect. Ratification obliges them to meet specific targets for cutting the emissions blamed for global warming from their 1990 levels. Since the United States, which accounts for some 36 percent of carbon dioxide emissions among developed nations, has already rejected the deal, virtually all the other big polluters, including European Union states, Russia, Japan and Canada, must ratify for the pact to take effect.
While there had been some speculation Washington might ease its opposition to the Kyoto pact as a result of an ongoing internal policy review, it was now focused on its war against terrorism following the Sept. 11 suicide airliner attacks and was paying little attention to climate change, Cutajar said. He predicted that Russia, another question mark, would ratify following tough negotiations in Marrakesh. return to COP7 page
The brokerage arm of Mitsubishi Tokyo Financial Group Inc. (8306) will by the end of next year help power plants scheduled to be built in Thailand obtain quotas and look for emissions rights buyers.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change imposed quotas on the amount of global warming gases, such as carbon dioxide, that countries can emit. The pact also allows states and corporations to trade rights to these quotas.
Five rice husk-fueled power plants with a total output of 100 megawatts will be built by Thai companies. The plants will emit between 400,000 and 500,000 metric tons less carbon dioxide annually than thermal power plants of similar size. The reduction in gas emissions will become salable emissions rights for the plant operators.
In offering the service, the brokerage will receive financial help from Japan's Environment Ministry. The brokerage will not be involved in the power generation business itself, the sources said.
Meidensha Corp. (6508) and Sumitomo Corp. (8053) have recently won a contract worth about 1.2 billion yen to build similar power plants for Thailand's Roi-Et Green Co.
(The Nihon Keizai Shimbun Saturday morning edition)
Speaking at a high-level climate conference organised by insurer Swiss Re in Zürich, Switzerland, Mr Loy said: "The events have forced the US to realise we're more dependent on the help of others that we used to think. But it won't force a 180 degree turn."
Mr Loy's comments follow growing speculation in some European capitals that the rapid formation of a world coalition behind America's fight against international terrorism might prove a useful lever to tempt the USA back into the Kyoto fold.
In his keynote speech to Britain's ruling Labour party conference on 2 October, prime minister Tony Blair earned loud applause by backing Kyoto. "We will implement it and call on all other nations to do so," he said.
Interviewed by Reuters yesterday, UK environment minister Michael Meacher went further by making explicit what Mr Blair had only implied: "Only the US stood out on Kyoto. Maybe the terrible events of September 11 will give it pause to remember its international obligations".
With almost its entire body politic now focused on Afghanistan and threats of further terrorism at home, there was never likely to be an immediate American U-turn on Kyoto. This was confirmed earlier this month at a conference in London by its new new senior climate negotiator Harlan Watson.
Mr Watson reiterated the USA's intention not to ratify Kyoto. However, he also restated a separate commitment not to impede other countries from ratifying and scotched rumours that America might not attend the forthcoming world climate summit in Marrakech, Morocco.
While accepting there would be no policy "flip-flop" on America's part, Mr Loy said the US government had "put itself in a box" by the "abrupt and brutal" way it had dismissed what he called a "very good" global accord.
Critically, the former policy chief said it was now very unlikely that the USA would propose any international alternative to Kyoto. Though he didn't spell it out, this implies that the protocol will remain the "only game in town," so strengthening its long-term gravitational pull on any country remaining outside.
Follow-up: Swiss Re press release
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