By Stephen de Tarczynski
MELBOURNE, Nov 29 2007 (IPS)

While Australia’s prime minister-elect, Kevin Rudd, can expect plaudits when he attends next week’s United Nation’s Climate Change conference in Bali, for his pledge to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the ratification process may not be as easy as first anticipated.

"I think it will make an immediate effect in terms of the impression it will make on the rest of the world because we will then rejoin the rest of the nations in being seen to be serious about addressing climate change," Geoffrey Wescott, associate professor at Deakin University’s School of Environmental Sciences, told IPS.

Kevin Rudd – whose newly elected Labor party ended the eleven year reign of John Howard’s Liberal-National coalition with victory in the Nov.24 poll – said this week that ratifying the Kyoto Protocol was one of his first priorities as Australia’s new leader.

Rudd was formally invited to the December 3-14 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting in Bali ,shortly after the elections, by Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Discussions at the Bali meeting will focus on a framework to follow the Kyoto Protocol’s first commitment period, which ends in 2012.

For Australia, the Labor Party’s pledge to ratify the Kyoto treaty – which will see Australia join with more than 170 countries that have already ratified the protocol – signals a shift in policy from that of the previous government. Under Howard’s leadership, Australia signed, but did not ratify, the protocol.

Ratification of the Kyoto Protocol commits industrialised countries – referred to as Annex 1 countries under the treaty – to cut greenhouse gas (GhG) emissions by an average of five percent from their 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012.

The United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) Human Development Report 2007/2008, released during the week, shows that Australia’s 2004 levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions were 1.1 percent of the total world output. At the time, Australia’s population was just 0.3 percent of the world’s total.

The data also shows that Australia ranked poorly on CO2 emissions on a per capita basis. In 2004, Australia emitted 16.2 tonnes of CO2 per capita while China emitted 3.8 tonnes per capita and India was responsible for 1.2 tonnes of CO2 per person.

The Howard Government argued that ratifying the protocol would jeopardise Australian jobs and industry. Howard opposed Australia’s commitment to the protocol as major polluters, such as China and India, would not be subject to the same restrictions and penalties that Australia would face.

Wescott argues that the Howard government’s refusal to ratify Kyoto damaged the perception of Australia throughout the world. "In terms of Australia’s international reputation we certainly slipped back well into the pack," he said.

"At the conferences I went to people were very surprised that a country such as Australia, which had had a leading role in environmental matters and had often been one of the most progressive nations, all of a sudden slipped to the back of the field,’’ argues Wescott. "We used to have a reputation of being very progressive on environmental issues and often being one of the leaders on a whole range of issues, including whaling and Southern Ocean matters, and Antarctica.’’

In his view Australia’s refusal – alongside that of the U.S. – to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, made the former position of high international standing on environmental issues virtually untenable.

"It did make it more difficult to have a progressive view of those (issues) and to be putting forward those views when we were really one-out with the U.S. as a developed country on Kyoto," Wescott told IPS, adding that Australian ratification of the process would put further pressure on the U.S., one of the world’s biggest polluters.

But while Labor’s policy of ratifying Kyoto appears to have the backing of both the Australian electorate and the international community – except, of course, for some notable exceptions – the domestic framework that the process requires is yet to be put in place.

Prof. Don Rothwell, from the Australian National University’s Law College, told ABC radio’s ‘PM’ programme that there are several steps that need to be taken before Australia can ratify the protocol.

Rothwell says that under normal circumstances "a government would have processes in place where a national impact analysis would be completed. A review of the treaty would be undertaken by the treaties committee. Legislation would be enacted through parliament and finally we would get to a stage where the executive council would recommend ratification to the Governor-General’’.

Rothwell argues that for the treaty to have effect under Australian law, legislation providing for the limiting of GhG emissions by industry and which gives effect to the protocol’s emissions trading regime, would need to be passed by parliament.

"Because of the position that the Howard Government took on that matter, there is no existing Kyoto legislation, so this would be a major hurdle for the Rudd government," he says.

But while Labor has won a resounding electoral victory – final vote counting continues and Labor is expected to win 85 seats in the 150 seat House of Representatives – it still faces a potentially hostile Senate.

The Liberal-National coalition has an absolute majority in the Senate until July 2008, when the change-over of senators, as determined at the Nov.24 election, takes place.

Although new opposition leader, Brendan Nelson, has reversed the Howard government’s policy on the Kyoto Protocol by supporting Labor’s plans to ratify the treaty, the required legislation could still be blocked in the Senate.

"The need to get the legislation through in exactly the form that the government would want to ensure that gives appropriate effect to Kyoto could really become a very pressing issue for the Rudd Government throughout 2008," says Rothwell.

Earth Alert: Confronting Climate Change https://www.ipsnews.net/new_focus/kyoto/index.asp

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