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ENVIRONMENT: Climate Change Negotiations at a Snail’s Pace

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Dec 1 2003 (IPS) - International talks on climate change got underway 13 years ago with a strong push towards curbing emissions of greenhouse gases, but more recently the talks have gotten bogged down – at moments completely stalling, while only rarely are there small accelerations.

“The balance is positive” because emissions have been on the decline and the public is more aware about the need to mitigate the process of global warming, says Argentine ambassador Raúl Estrada Oyuela, chair of the committee that drafted the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gases.

But the ones who are responsible for the greatest volume of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions remain outside the abatement commitment mechanism, not all states are reporting their emissions levels, and poor countries – although they have made some advances – are moving very slowly on the matter, he said in a conversation with IPS.

Most environmental organisations agree, though they say their disappointment is even greater given the enormous effort it takes to participate in a long, expensive and technically complicated process and in which the main decisions are not always taken “close to home”.

The 9th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Climate Change began Monday in Milan, and there are few expectations that progress will be made towards the goals of emissions abatement, after the refusal of Russia – a major producer of carbon dioxide – to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

“In these past few years there was an extraordinary scientific effort, positive steps by some governments, panic among emitting industries, and an imbalance that is almost comical between the United States, the world’s top polluter, and the rest of the countries,” summarised Silvana Buján, coordinator of the National Network of Ecological Action (Renace), an umbrella of 70 environmental groups in Argentina.

In 1990, the concern about the relationship between greenhouse gas emissions and the gradual rise of the earth’s average surface temperatures prompted the United Nations General Assembly to open talks on the Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Two years later, the Convention was ready for signatures from the U.N. members, and by the late 1990s, 175 states had ratified it. But then it was decided that it was necessary to establish additional quantifiable commitments for industrialised countries, responsible for 75 percent of greenhouse gas emissions.

Thus emerged the Kyoto Protocol, which states that the rich nations are to curb emissions so that in the 2008-2012 period, the average emissions are 5.2 percent less than they were in 1990 in each country. But attempts to convince the principal polluters to ratify the instrument have failed.

The Protocol would enter into force 90 days after 55 countries have ratified it, and these must include countries responsible for a combined total of at least 55 percent of the greenhouse gas emissions recorded in 1990 in the industrialised world.

The countries of the European Union ratified the treaty and are pushing for it to take effect, but U.S. President George W. Bush announced last year that not only did he oppose ratification, but that he was also withdrawing his country’s signature.

Later, there was a campaign to obtain the Russian ratification, but the “great disappointment” amongst negotiators, says Estrada, was that the Milan meet would take place without Moscow within the system of emission-abating pledges.

Amanda Bertolutti, president of an Argentine ecological information network, told IPS that since 1994 there has been a good deal of backsliding in the application of climate change commitments, which she attributed in part to the lack of coordination among countries.

After the advances made in the initial years, the international conventions on the environment were co-opted by corporate executives and politicians in industrialised countries so that there was disorder in the proceedings and there were more words and less action, said Bertolutti.

Political leaders, big business, consultancies and professional groups involved in the negotiating system “were able to neutralise” other organisations that had participated since the beginning “without interest in profit and thinking only of the common good,” commented the activist.

“We saw this Convention born like many others, we participated in and supported its creation, we accompanied its development, but when we fight for it to ‘come of age’, they shut us off, as if we were a bothersome radio,” she said.

According to Bertolutti, there were initial successes, but then the pace of the process began to fluctuate. “Every day we are moving more slowly, as if we had the brakes on, with only occasional accelerations. We are not going to come to a complete stop, but a lot of time is lost in the detours and dead-ends.”

Jorge Trevín, activist with the Argentine environmental group Ambiente Sur, says the lack of results in curbing climate change can be explained in part because it entails “slow and complex” processes that involve many diverse interests.

But the problems grow more complicated as a result of the context of the international debate, he adds.

“On the current scenario, international law has been greatly discredited and shamefully subject to the interests of a country that applies it when it deems it convenient, and violates it when not, with the U.N. limiting itself to a mere observer,” he said, referring to the United States.

Trevín believes the negotiators are confronted with a “dark period” in the history of international justice, but says that it should not halt the process, but rather reinforce it, through “the denunciation of the hypocritical positions and of the failure to comply with assumed commitments.”

Estrada, Argentina’s special representative for international environmental affairs and part of this country’s delegation to the Conference of Parties in Milan, which ends Dec. 12, said that several aspects of the Framework Convention could see progress.

Furthermore, it will be a chance to begin talks on the modality for setting new emissions reduction goals beginning in 2012, when the current period of commitments comes to an end, he said.

A key issue is whether to maintain the goals in terms of percentages or to look for an alternative measurement for greenhouse gas reductions. The long-standing position of many developing countries is that it is “unfair” to consider the past harm a consummated fact, and that based on this the proportions of abatement are established.

But Estrada says studies must be conducted and debate held to identify the most useful methodology and the one with greatest consensus.

For example, there could be per capita emissions quotas, or variable measures in function of the volumes of greenhouse gas production of the main industries of each economy.

Nor did the negotiator rule out the possibility of “more than one protocol,” beyond the Kyoto agreement.

“It is perfectly possible to have more than one, and to combine them so that they can offer the states the choice of participating in one or the other, or both. In this way we at least move toward the goal” of curbing emissions, he said.

According to spokespersons from environmental groups, that alternative would only accentuate the defects in the negotiation mechanisms.

“One way to put the brakes on everything would be to produce new international agreements that contradict each other,” commented Bertolutti.

“If there isn’t synergy between conventions, a ‘negative synergy’ would emerge, and annul the functioning of each one separately,” she said.

“Divide and conquer,” summarised the environmentalist.

The negotiators in Milan will decide the next venue of the Conference of Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, which meets each year. Estrada notes that next year it will be Latin America’s turn to host the event, but that the countries with the wherewithal to do so – Brazil, Mexico and Chile – have not offered. Argentina hosted the conference in 1994.

“It would be odd to have to hold it again in Buenos Aires. A great deal of money is required. But given the lack of proposals, perhaps we will have to consider it,” said Estrada.