Climate Change, Environment, Europe, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines

ENVIRONMENT: Forward to 1997 At Last

Sanjay Suri

LONDON, Sep 29 2004 (IPS) - The Russian move to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is set to bring a major change to industrial economies across the developed world.

It marks also a major advance towards restricting long-term climate change, the reason the Protocol was agreed in the first place in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997.

The Kyoto protocol set out legally binding emissions targets for industrialised countries. It was followed by the Marrakesh accords agreed in 2001 that set out the mechanics of the Kyoto protocol in detail.

The Kyoto Protocol grew out of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change that came into force in March 1994. Under that convention 188 countries committed themselves to taking action to contain global warming and therefore climate change.

The Kyoto protocol was signed to give that convention functioning teeth by setting out legally binding commitments to reduce emissions.

But the Kyoto protocol is not yet international law. It requires at least 55 countries that are parties to the convention to ratify the protocol, including enough of the industrialised countries that are responsible between them for at least 55 percent of the emission of greenhouse gases relative to 1990 levels.

The principal greenhouse gases are carbon dioxide and methane, which cause heating of the atmosphere and therefore changes to climate patterns.

The industrialised countries for the purpose of the Kyoto Protocol are those listed in Annex I of the convention, and include the United States, Russia, Japan, the EU countries and Australia.

The United States pulled out of the Kyoto protocol in 2001. Its absence and that also of other significant polluters such as Australia and Russia meant that the Kyoto protocol could not come into force because the signatories did not produce between them 55 percent of the emissions.

That barrier will be passed once Russia joins. Russia has been held responsible for 17 percent of global emissions of greenhouse gases measured at 1990 levels. But countries such as the United States and Australia that have not signed the Kyoto protocol will still not be bound by it.

The principal difference once Russia ratifies the protocol will be that signatories will be legally bound to reduce emissions, and not undertake measures voluntarily, as they do at present.

”It will come into effect only for those who have signed it, but a clear consequence will be that countries will now have a legal obligation to show that they are reducing emissions,” Catherine Pearce from Friends of the Earth International told IPS.

The very existence of a legally binging international agreement rather than merely an informal agreement among some countries is expected to strongly strengthen the case for curbing emissions even among countries that have not signed up.

”It will work at a wider political level,” Pearce said. ”It is a subtle but powerful move. Once it is in force it will show where we are in the international context. The Kyoto protocol is only a first step, and once it is legal it will set us all on a path to setting tougher targets.”

A Russian ratification will also create new pressure on ”onlookers like America and Australia” to join the protocol, Pearce said. ”They will now face up to economic costs beyond imagination from climate change and environmental consequences.”

But the Kyoto protocol does not necessarily make Australia and the United States the bad guys on the environmental scene. ”A lot of the states in America are taking action at their own level with reduction programmes in industry and transport,” Pearce said.

Once the Kyoto protocol becomes international law, member countries will have to take several supportive steps besides emissions reductions. These will include the creation of an adaptation fund to minimise impact of emissions on developing countries.

They will have to adopt specified accounting, reporting and review measures, including an in-depth review of national reporting. An international compliance committee would be set up to assess and deal with problem cases. Emission reductions will in effect be policed rather than held up as only a good thing to do.

The Kyoto protocol and the emissions reduction target do not apply to developing countries as yet. (END/IPS/EU/WD/EN/SS/RAJ/04)