ENVIRONMENT: New Talks on Climate Change in the Works

By Gustavo Capdevila Reprint | | Print |

Gustavo Capdevila

GENEVA, Sep 6 2000 (IPS) - An international conference on the mechanisms needed to reduce greenhouse gases, which cause global warming, is set to begin next week in the French city of Lyon, and the industrialised North will be the principal target of debate.

The international community has identified gas emissions as a cause of climate change because they elevate the earth’s temperatures, and has also agreed on the necessary steps to reduce these gases, but must still obtain practical commitments from industrialised nations.

The fundamental issue at the Lyon meeting, in preparation for the November conference at The Hague, consists of winning a commitment from the world’s wealthier nations, explained Michael Zammit Cutajar, executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Without this sort of guarantee from the countries of the North, especially from the United States, the Kyoto Protocol, adopted in 1997 to establish the rules of the game for mitigating climate change, will not enter into effect, Zammit pointed out.

The Kyoto Protocol requires the ratification of at least 55 of the countries that signed the Convention, including the industrialised countries of the Organisation of Economic Co- operation and Development (OECD) and transitional economies, which in 1990 accounted for at least 55 percent of carbon dioxide emissions.

In the period 2008 to 2012, this bloc of countries must cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of five percent from their 1990 levels. But industrialised nations face the issues of high economic costs and political resistance to change.

In the long term, the decision to cut emissions means changes in the models of production and consumption, as well as lifestyle modifications. Over the last 200 years, these models of economic behaviour created the climate change problem, Zammit told the media Tuesday in Geneva.

Greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide, are released into the atmosphere when fossil fuels are burned, including petroleum, coal and gasoline, primarily by vehicles and factories.

The rich nations of the world can overcome the problem of gas reduction through the purchase of emissions credits, a mechanism established by the Kyoto Protocol.

But poor nations, especially those characterised as least developed countries (LDCs), need the assistance of the international community in building their capacity to handle the climate change problem.

The developing countries have accepted the obligations established by the Convention, which does not establish a limit for their greenhouse gas emissions.

The multilateral instrument forces them to recognise the gravity of climate change and to implement national programmes and co-operate in the exchange of information on the issue.

But last weekend the Group of 77 plus China, made up of developing nations, stressed their firm opposition to new commitments.

In the future, obviously, they will have to accept them, but developing countries do not agree to discuss commitments in the current negotiations, said Zammit.

Another side of the issue is that oil producing countries are concerned that measures intended to reduce energy use in the industrialised world, their principal market, will hurt their petroleum exports.

These countries fear the petroleum market will suffer as a result of policies to fight climate change. They demand international recognition of the problem and some sort of response from the industrialised countries.

This is one of the most critical aspects of the negotiations, said Zammit, and in the practical sphere, one of the most heated issues.

The Lyon conference, to be inaugurated Monday by French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin, will include the participation of Dutch Environmental Minister, Jan Pronk, who will preside at the November meeting at The Hague.

Zammit interpreted the Jospin invitation to hold the talks in Lyon as proof of the concern of France and other European governments about the consequences of the storms last December that devastated several regions and flattened vast areas of forests, phenomena related to climate change.

An increase in the frequency of extreme weather events will be one of the effects of climate destabilisation, predicted the official.

Other results of climate destabilisation can be seen in the spread of insect-borne diseases due to rising average temperatures, and in rising sea levels, which affect millions of people living on islands, coasts and deltas, according to Zammit.