By IPS Correspondents
MOSCOW, Jun 13 2003 (IPS)

The Russian government is having second thoughts about signing the Kyoto Protocol, which intends to reduce emissions that contribute to global warming.

Russia must weigh it pros and cons carefully before ratifying the Kyoto protocol, President Vladimir Putin’s chief economic adviser Andrei Illarionov told journalists in Moscow earlier this month. “There are several important questions which are yet to be answered,” he said. “There have been no serious studies confirming that global warming is taking place.”

The third International Conference on Climate Change is due in Moscow in September, but it is not clear now what position Russia will take. “We are going to find out what is really going on on this planet – warming or cooling,” Yury Izrael, chair of the organising committee for the conference said in a statement.

“The most important issue is whether ratifying the Kyoto protocol would improve the climate, stabilise it or make it worse,” Izrael said. “This is not very clear.”

Environmentalists have been taken aback by these remarks. “We believe that ratifying the Kyoto protocol would be beneficial for Russia in terms of protecting the environment and developing the country’s economy,” Yevgeny Schwartz, head of conservation programmes at WWF in Russia told IPS.

The September conference is likely to become “quite lively” in the face of the Russian position, Schwartz said. The conference is expected to bring 1,200 participants from 52 countries. Scientists have submitted more than 500 reports to the conference.

Signed in December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, the Protocol to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change sought a 5 percent reduction in emissions of carbon dioxide and methane in industrialised nations from 1990 levels.

The Kyoto protocol as it came to be called, would take effect if nations that account for at least 55 percent of the 1990 emissions levels ratify the treaty. The European Union, other European states and Japan – which are expected to ratify the protocol – account for 39 percent. The U.S. walked away from the Kyoto protocol two years ago. Russia’s share is 17 percent and ratification by Russia would mean that the Kyoto protocol could become effective straightaway.

Earlier pledges indicated that Russia would ratify the protocol soon. Putin said that Russia was “inclined” to approve it. Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the World Summit on Sustainable Development in South Africa last year that “ratification would take place in the very near future.”

The United States argued that the protocol is too expensive to implement.. President George W. Bush rejected the pact in March 2001, saying it would adversely affect the U.S. economy. The United States accounts for about 35 percent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions.

Russia was among earlier supporters of the protocol who accused the U.S. of undermining the international drive against global warming. In the wake of U.S. withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol, Russia’s role was seen as increasingly important.

Russian officials now seem to echo the U.S. argument. Illarionov said there was still no idea what it would cost to implement the protocol. “I’m not sure that Russia can afford to spend what the U.S., the richest country on earth, cannot afford,” he said.

Russia had expected earlier to benefit from the treaty. Its supporters had tentatively proposed setting up a market where countries could sell unused pollution quotas to defaulting nations that pollute more. The trade in emission quotas was designed to reward clean industries and to serve as an incentive for polluting industries to invest in environment-friendly technologies.

Russia did not expect to use all of its polluting quota under the Kyoto deal, because Russian industry now produces only about half as much as it used to in the late 1980s. This has led to a 30 percent drop in emissions since 1990.

Russia had hoped to earn anywhere from 500 million dollars to four billion dollars a year by selling emission quotas to other countries, according to the energy ministry. But the U.S. withdrawal from the treaty came as a blow to these plans because the U.S. was expected to be a major buyer on the quota market..

Illarionov now says an expected industrial upturn could cut the country’s unused emissions quota, and Russia may even have to end up as a buyer of quotas if the protocol came into effect.

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