ENVIRONMENT: Rough Sailing Ahead for Global Warming Talks

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Nov 10 1997 (IPS) - Prospects for smooth agreement next month on a worldwide plan against global warming appear slim, after a last- ditch meeting here failed to break a deadlock on targets for cutting emissions of greenhouse gases.

Talks among environment officials Saturday and Sunday failed to produce a consensus on an international plan of action on climate change, which is supposed to be hammered out at a Dec 1 -10 meeting in Kyoto, Japan of parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

At the Kyoto meeting, developed countries, responsible for bulk of greenhouse gas emissions, are supposed to tighten current targets for reducing the production of these gases, primarily carbon dioxide that comes from industrial and energy uses.

“The (Tokyo) meeting failed to achieve a consensus on carbon dioxide cuts. It is disheartening, but we refuse to give up all hope,” said Koichi Watanabe of World WildLife Fund, Japan. “We must see better results at Kyoto.”

Negotiations among key governments have been going on for years, with the Tokyo ‘informal’ talks being preceded by two weeks of discussions in Bonn, Germany.

The Tokyo talks were attended by the European Union, the United States and other industrialised countries, as well as seven developing countries including India and Indonesia.

The deadlock leaves negotiations on climate change faced with sharply different proposals for reduction targets.

Japan, host of Kyoto meeting, faces what seems to be an impossible divide between the EU, which advocates a 15 percent cut in emissions from 1990 levels by 2010, and the US, which wants to stabilise such emissions at 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012. The U.S. proposal would set targets below those it already committed to at the 1992 ‘Earth Summit.

Developing countries, represented by the Group of 77 and China, have presented yet another formula. Keen to see more action by developed countries, the bloc endorses the EU target, but goes beyond it.

The G-77 and China want developed countries to reduce emissions from 1990 levels by 7.5 percent in 2005, by 15 percent in 2010 and by 35 percent in the year 2020.

The Japanese government has proposed an average five percent reduction by industrialised countries, to be calculated on a country-by-country basis, between the years 2008 and 2012 from 1990 levels.

Tokyo hopes that its suggestion will pave the way for compromise, but has its hands full trying to see that a binding accord takes shape next month. Its own activists have criticised its formula as too little to be meaningful.

But while there was no progress on the setting of targets in the past few days, Japanese officials say some headway was made on the issue of commitments on greenhouse gases by developing nations.

Over the weekend, the United States backed down from its insistence that developing countries comply with reduction targets as well. Before that, Washington, had said it would not adopt binding obligations unless developing countries are also held to their own.

“The US delegation confirmed the point” that it would not force the issue at Kyoto, said Hiroshi Oki, director general of Japan’s Environment Agency.

Kyodo news service, quoting unnamed sources, reported that the US would not seek to have the Kyoto document require binding obligations for developing nations.

The issue goes to the heart of a long-running debate between developed and developing nations on climate change. Developing countries argue that industrialised nations have responsibility for making bigger cuts because they account for most of the greenhouse gases, which cause the Earth’s temperatures to rise and have potentially destructive effects on weather, agriculture and economic development.

Thus, developing countries want to see developed countries take the lead by reaching meaningful reduction targets at Kyoto. But countries like the US point out that industrialisation in developing nations is also making them sizable producers of greenhouse gases.

Their efforts at getting developing nations to set their own greenhouse gas targets have been met with opposition by the developing world. As an Indonesian delegate at the weekend meeting pointedly said, developing countries will not do anything “unless developed countries take the lead”.

Japan and the European Union do not agree with forcing targets on developing countries. Based on an agreement reached in 1995, developing countries are not required at the Kyoto conference to make legally binding commitments on greenhouse gas emissions.

“There have been a lot of efforts on the part of developing countries such as India and China to achieve reductions,” said an official with Japan’s foreign ministry. “The issue in Kyoto is how fast and under which framework must their reductions proceed.”

Watanabe views the painstaking negotiations ahead of the Kyoto conference as a indication of global pressure on countries to reach an acceptable settlement. But at the same time, he fears that talks’ difficult path may lead to a less than meaningful accord at Kyoto.

“The fact that there was no concrete achievement (over the weekend) could mean the development of a mandate in Kyoto in which figures or targets would be embodied into an attachment to the main draft, rather than displayed as a concrete overall commitment to be implemented into policies in different countries,” he said.