ENVIRONMENT: Disappointed by Bush, Kyoto Protocol Backers Look East

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - Danielle Knight

WASHINGTON, Jun 16 2001 (IPS) - President George W. Bush’s opposition to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change – a major irritant on his maiden presidential visit to Europe this week – has underscored the importance of Russia and especially Japan.

“One of the main tasks in front of us is to get Japan on board,” Svend Auken, the Danish energy and environment minister, said in Washington.

Auken, who spoke at the World Bank Thursday, echoed European Union (EU) leaders in asserting the goal would be to push forward with the Kyoto framework – with or without the United States.

Activists welcomed the sentiment. “Placing the future of the climate in President Bush’s hands is too risky a business to even be considered,” said Jennifer Morgan, climate change campaign director at the World Wildlife Fund.

Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson said after EU leaders met Bush Thursday, “Kyoto is not meaningless without the United States, because it is just the first step.”

“We have to go ahead, beyond Kyoto,” Persson said. “If we now begin to hesitate about the Kyoto Protocol, we will start completely at the beginning again and again.”

Thus attention has turned to Japan and Russia, whose participation is considered key if the protocol is to enter into effect. The former has stated its intention to ratify the pact and the latter has said it is seriously considering doing so.

With Washington effectively bowing out, however, officials and activists said there is always the risk that Tokyo and Moscow will follow suit, although any pull back likely would be presented as an attempt to secure a broader consensus including the United States.

For the Kyoto Protocol to become international law, governments whose countries account for 55 percent of the industrialised world’s carbon emissions must ratify it. If Russia joins the EU, Switzerland, Estonia, Latvia and Norway in ratifying the agreement, participation would rise to 49.7 percent. Japan’s signature would raise the level to 58.25 percent and the treaty would enter into force.

With 4.6 percent of the world’s population, the United States is the world’s leading emitter of greenhouse gases, accounting for roughly 25 percent of the global total. Bush’s advisers appear to have gambled that such a preponderant position, coupled with expressions of concern regarding Kyoto’s underlying scientific soundness, effectively would allow Washington to block the treaty until it could be refashioned to suit US interests.

That may yet happen. The key question, said Morgan, is whether the Bush administration will allow other countries to move forward, finalise and ratify the agreement or obstruct such efforts.

For now, the signals from Europe are not accommodating toward Washington.

Romano Prodi, president of the European Commission, said that every EU nation will ratify the treaty and that the “process would start soon.” He threw cold water on US claims that some members also believe the treaty is flawed, brushing off the apparent delay as a procedural matter.

EU officials added that high-level negotiations on the protocol continue and that the treaty will be completed in time for next month’s conference of parties in Bonn, Germany. They flatly denied US assertions that the talks had stalled.

Jan Pronk, the Dutch environment minister and treaty talks chairman, released a new negotiating draft this week. World environment ministers plan to discuss the document in The Hague Jun. 27-28. US participation has not been confirmed.

Auken, however, sounded a note of caution. Even if the treaty enters into force, implementation would remain a challenge with 40 percent of the industrialised missing from action.

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol requires industrialised nations to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of five percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Most scientists believe that these gases – caused by the burning of fossil fuels like oil, gas and coal – are causing global warming, which could cause widespread climate disruptions.

Bush, however, has complained that it would be harmful to the US economy to scale back on burning fuel and that the Kyoto agreement does not sufficiently oblige developing countries like China and India to participate in addressing global warming.

Auken countered that in Denmark’s experience, it is possible to thrive economically while reducing emissions. Government programmes there have encouraged investment and research on renewable energy. As a result, the country is less dependent on fossil fuels, mostly imported, and has generated some 15,000 jobs in the wind energy industry. Renewable energy has grown from four percent of total national supply in 1993, to 16 percent now.

Even Bush’s assertion that China and other developing countries have not taken action to curb emissions has come under fire – from his own civil service.

Bush has argued that China, with its huge population and endless coal reserves, will overtake the United States early this century as the biggest source of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.

According to data compiled by the US Department of Energy, however, China’s annual output of carbon dioxide in the last four years of rapid economic growth has actually declined – and US emissions, by contrast, have continued to rise.

China launched in 1996 a campaign to modernise its coal-combustion industrial boilers, the country’s leading source of carbon dioxide pollution. The boilers emit some 715 million tons of carbon dioxide per year, according to the US-based National Environmental Trust, but the efficiency drive could cut that level by 181 million tons per year.