New Kyoto Protocol talks will be key 2009 focus

By Eric Lyman, in Poznan, Poland, for ISN Security Watch

 As countries battle to come up with a plan to limit greenhouse gas emissions in 2009, attention will almost surely begin to focus on two main players that hold the fate of the international process in their hands: the US and China.

December’s United Nations negotiations on climate change in Poznan, Poland, concluded with relatively little progress. Delegates voted to activate a fund to help poor countries adapt to the changing climate, for example, but they did not approve a mechanism to put cash in the fund.

They failed to agree on a first draft of the agreement that could eventually replace the 11-year-old Kyoto Protocol when it expires in 2012, but did give a mandate to a small group of officials to start work on that document independently.

The deadline for approval of the agreement that will replace the Kyoto treaty when it expires remains the end of next year, though in private many participants said that the lack of progress in Poznan meant that deadline was likely no longer feasible. Most reports from the negotiations were critical, but, to be fair, timing made the process tougher than it would have been under normal circumstances. 

To wit:

• The world economic turmoil made governments much less likely to pull out their checkbooks, despite the UN’s argument that the solution to the economic problems should be linked to efforts to confront climate change.

• Arguments refuting the threat of rising greenhouse gasses have gained more attention than they have in years, with a US Senate minority report quoting hundreds of prominent scientists arguing that threats are overblown gaining unexpected attention.

• And perhaps most importantly, as the first major climate summit since the first compliance period of Kyoto Protocol kicked off last 1 January, negotiators found themselves working on a post-Kyoto treaty amid striking evidence that the Kyoto agreement itself has so far been starkly ineffective in its main task of obliging countries to reduce emissions.

Under Kyoto’s terms, countries are required to reduce emissions by an average of 5.2 percent compared to 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 period. Yet the latest figures show that exactly half of the 40 industrialized countries whose greenhouse gas emissions are monitored under the terms of the Kyoto Protocol have so far seen emissions rise since 1990.

Of the 16 nations that have seen their emissions fall by at least the 5.2 percent benchmark, only the three with the most modest reductions – Sweden, Monaco and Britain – were not at least in part members of the former Soviet bloc, whose emission levels plummeted when its communist-era economies crumbled after the 1990 base year.

The biggest complaint about the Kyoto Protocol is that it requires too few countries to take action. A total of 188 countries ratified the agreement, but only 40 so-called Annex I countries – modern, industrialized economies mostly in Europe, North America and Asia – are compelled to reduce emissions.

That dichotomy became particularly pronounced 2001 when US President George W Bush said that his country – then the world’s largest polluter – would not ratify Kyoto in part because it did not require large developing countries like China and India to take on commitments. The US feared that if it did so, the obligations would have put it at a competitive disadvantage compared to those fast-growing economies that could grow with no restrictions.

In 2007, China surpassed the US to become the world’s largest polluter; India is third on the list. Without them and other large emerging economies like Brazil and Mexico, any international greenhouse gas emissions reduction plan would be futile. But those countries fairly argue that it is not fair to penalize their industrial development when rich countries are able to pollute with no restrictions as their economies matured.

The result? A staring match between two camps, with the biggest polluter on each side aware that the process cannot continue without them, as each refuses to act unless the other acts first.

The adaptation fund and other initiatives aimed at capacity building or technology transfer are seen as ways of leveling the playing field by having developed countries help pay to reduce the economic impact the process would have on their developing neighbors. But so far, those initiatives largely have been left unfunded.

In Poznan, that divide between the camps was termed as rich countries vs poor or the north vs the south. But it is really Washington vs Beijing, and for good or bad, the future of the international climate change process depends on how and when their differences are resolved.

*See http://www.isn.ethz.ch/isn/