Climate Talks Face Warming World Without Kyoto Protocol

BRUSSELS, Belgium, November 28, 2003 (ENS) - World governments are preparing for the ninth annual conference of parties to the United Nations Climate Change Convention, known as COP-9, opening Monday in Milan.

The meeting was expected to celebrate entry into force of the convention's Kyoto Protocol that sets binding limits on the emission of greenhouse gases by industrialized countries. Instead, it will be shadowed by uncertainty over the protocol's future as Russia continues to hesitate over its ratification.

Russian officials had indicated they would put the protocol's ratification before parliament, the state Duma, by the end of this year, but any consideration of the issue will now have to wait until after Russian Parliamentary elections set for December 7.

Russia's ratification is needed to bring the protocol into force, and the country's officials are being courted by the European Union, which has already ratified the protocol and is acting to implement it, and the United States which withdrew from the Kyoto process when George W. Bush took office in 2001.

The rules for the protocol's entry into force require ratification by industrialized countries accounting for 55 percent of that group’s carbon dioxide emissions in 1990.

To date, 119 countries have ratified the protocol, but only 44 percent of the emissions target has been met by industralized countries. Russia's 17.4 percent would push the emissions governed by the protocol over the 55 percent threshold, triggering the treaty's entry into force.

Russian President Vladimir Putin holds the future of the Kyoto Protocol in his hands. (Photo courtesy Tickets of Russia)

But with or without Russian ratification, the 188 governments meeting from December 1 to 12 in Milan aim to advance the process of limiting climate change and dealing with a warming climate that humanity’s past emissions now make inevitable. Negotiations will include a review of national communications on emissions and actions being taken to mitigate them.

During these two weeks some 4,000 participants will attend more than 100 workshops and debates. Topics will range from renewable energy and corporate activities to scenarios for the next decade and beyond to institutional support to developing countries.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi plans to address delegates at the beginning of the ministerial segment set for December 10 and 11. Some 80 ministers from around the world are expected to participate in this segment, adding political momentum to the decisions taken by the conference.

Climate scientists predict that average global temperatures are expected to rise 1.4 from 5.8 degrees Celsius ( by the end of the 21st century.

“The fact that 2003 is on track to be one of the warmest years on record should be a warning that we must all take seriously," said Joke Waller-Hunter, the Convention’s Executive Secretary.

Joke Waller-Hunter of the Netherlands is Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. (Photo courtesy IISD)

According to the figures from the Climate Change Convention Secretariat, industrialized countries' output of greenhouse gases will rise 17 percent between 1990 and 2010, far from their aggregate Kyoto Protocol target of minus 5.2 percent by the end of 2012.

But, says Waller-Hunter, it is clear that governments are adopting more comprehensive and ambitious policies and measures for cutting emissions than they did just a few years ago. Although the 1997 Kyoto Protocol has not yet entered into force, many governments cite its influence on their efforts to reinforce domestic climate change policies, she said.

The flexible mechanisms of the Kyoto Protocol are taking shape although the treaty has not yet entered into force. After two years of intensive work the porotocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is now operational and the first projects will be registered early next year.

The CDM promotes sustainable development in developing countries by channelling private sector investment into emission reduction projects, while offering industrialized countries credits against their Kyoto Protocol targets.

On December 9 in Milan, delegates will be offered an event called The CDM: Power for the People, a debate on how the electric power industry can contribute to limiting emissions in developing countries by making investments.

Goverments will also explore how to expand CDM activities to afforestation and reforestation projects that remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Decisions are also expected on new methods for reporting national emissions from the forest sector.

A forum on December 10 called Getting There gathers government, business and NGO leaders for a strategy session on tackle the transport sector’s fast growing emissions.

Coal burning power plant in the town of Inta in the eastern European Russian Arctic. (Photo by P. Kuhry courtesy University of Lapland)

A possible shift in emphasis from binding emission targets to low-carbon technology policies is being discussed as a possible route forward.

Technology, market mechanisms, and voluntary greenhouse gas reductions is the path favored by the United States under the Bush administration. On Friday, the U.S. Energy Department released proposed guidelines for the voluntary reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and reduction efforts designed to improve the accuracy, verifiability and completeness of greenhouse gas emission data reported under the agency's registry program.

Through the registry program, established in 1992 by the first President Bush, the present Bush administration aims to encourage corporations, government agencies, nonprofit organizations, households and other private and public entities to submit annual reports of their total greenhouse gas emissions, net emission reductions, and carbon sequestration activities that are complete, reliable and consistent.

In a related development, Germany's advisory council on global change, the WBGU, has warned that industrialized countries will have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 percent by 2020.

The council called for developed and developing countries to converge to equal per capita emissions by 2050. "There are no alternatives" to the Kyoto process, it warned, and therefore "all actions that call the protocol into question set global climate protection policy back by years."

{ENDS Environment Daily contributed to this report.}