Kyoto Process Still Alive but Suffering 'Political Schizophrenia'
Worldwide Fund for Nature
4 November 1999
Bonn, Germany -- Negotiating tactics by government officials are undermining calls by a number of environment ministers for faster action to tackle global warming, the international conservation organization WWF announced today as two weeks of UN climate negotiations entered their final phase.
Lars Georg Jensen, leader of the WWF delegation, said the Kyoto Protocol process was suffering from "political schizophrenia". The condition has been brought on by official government negotiators working to widen loopholes in the Kyoto Protocol while at the same time, in another wing of the conference building, ministers have highlighted the merits of reducing global warming emissions.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder re-energised international efforts against climate change in his opening call to the conference for the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force no later than 2002, 10 years after the Rio Earth Summit on sustainable development. Ministers from more than 60 nations, including the EU, Japan, New Zealand and the 43 small island states of AOSIS were among those which came out in support.
Schroeder also applied pressure to boost flagging efforts to reduce domestic carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by reaffirming that Germany stands by its national commitment to reduce emissions by 25 per cent by 2005. This led John Prescott, Environment Minister and Deputy Prime Minister for the United Kingdom, to reiterate that the UK maintains its national goal of a 20 per cent cut in CO2 by 2010. WWF views this as a welcome development as the UK government has recently been emphasising their weaker Kyoto target in place of their domestic goal.
Over the coming months, WWF will be pushing other ministers to support the Schroeder/Prescott initiative by reassessing whether their countries are really doing all they can to reduce domestic carbon pollution. This is the only way to ensure that the Kyoto Protocol is the least rather than the most that industrialised nations do to combat global warming.
Instead of giving priority to reducing domestic pollution, officials from Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States led the way in trying to neuter the Kyoto Protocol. Their Ministers were among those highlighting the merits of reducing emissions. Elsewhere, their officials worked on widening a loophole in the protocol to allow nations to claim more credit for carbon absorbed from the atmosphere by vegetation and soil. United States' negotiators also reintroduced the idea of "borrowing" emissions allocations from the future, akin to "pollute now and pay later".
A similar proposal by the U.S. was ruled out when the Kyoto Protocol was agreed in 1997. Canada proposed support for building nuclear power stations in developing countries under the Protocol's "Clean Development Mechanism", though this was opposed by around 10 nations including most of the EU. On rules for complying with the terms of the protocol, officials from Saudi Arabia used procedural manoeuvring to try and block any form of progress. Meanwhile the environment minister from Saudi Arabia's ally, Kuwait, said "protection of the environment is at the centre of our policies."
Said WWF's Jensen: "Ministers need to cure the schizophrenia and give their officials considerably more guidance. Otherwise the Kyoto Protocol could become a licence for industrialised nations to increase not reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. They must also ensure that non-sustainable energy technologies like nuclear power aren't foisted on developing countries under the guise of climate protection."
One year remains before ministers are supposed to agree rules for operating the Kyoto Protocol at their sixth conference (COP6) to be held in The Hague, Netherlands. The Protocol would mean industrialised nations reducing emissions of global warming gases 5 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-2012.
For more information, and for interviews with WWF's international delegation in Bonn:
Andrew Kerr, WWF, tel: +31 6 5161 9462 (mobile)
Lars Georg Jensen, WWF, tel: +45 21 45 76 69 (mobile)