Kyoto Protocol Faces Gap After Emissions Targets End, UN Chief Says
The world’s only treaty that caps greenhouse-gas emissions will face a gap in enforcement after 2012 because its targets expire and an extension can’t be approved in time, the top United Nations climate official said.
Japan, Russia and Canada have said they won’t take part in a so-called second-commitment period under the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Even if they sign up to new goals at talks in December in Durban, South Africa, the decision will require an amendment of the treaty and ratification by governments around the world, the UN’s Christiana Figueres said today in Bonn.
“We would assume that there is no time to do that between Durban and the end of 2012,” Figueres told reporters, acknowledging for the first time that time has run out to agree to a new set of limits under Kyoto that will dovetail with the first. The Durban talks are the next scheduled round.
After failing to agree to a new global warming treaty in Copenhagen in 2009, more than 190 countries are trying to devise new rules to cut emissions that Figueres said last month rose to a record in the atmosphere. Developing countries including China say industrialized nations should act first while the U.S. and Japan say no agreement can work without all major emitters.
“We are not committed to any outcome which would only engage developed countries,” U.S. lead negotiator Jonathan Pershing said in Bonn after two weeks of talks began. “There is no scenario which works on this without a more comprehensive participation and collective action.”
Realistic Time?
Artur Runge Metzger, the lead negotiator for the European Commission, said 2014 or 2015 is “probably a realistic time perspective” for achieving a global deal including all the major emitters.
He said an agreement in Durban that only includes a new set of targets for the 27-nation European Union would not be a success, covering only about 11 percent of global emissions.
At the last round of ministerial negotiations in Cancun in December, governments agreed for the first time that the goal of the talks should be to keep the temperature rise since industrialization to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius and pledged to examine the possibility of a 1.5-degree target.
The International Energy Agency on May 31 said global carbon emissions from electricity generation climbed to a record in 2010, and the UN Environment Program said last year that current emissions pledges from all nations would lead to a temperature rise of 2.5 to 5 degrees Celsius by 2100.
The environmental groups WWF International and Greenpeace, which have pushed for a legally-binding treaty, both said an all-encompassing deal won’t be possible in Durban.
‘Political Environment’
“The political environment isn’t conducive for a fair, ambitious and binding deal,” said Tasneem Essop, lead climate campaigner for WWF. “It won’t be reached in Durban.”
This year’s talks can agree to set up institutions such as a green fund to channel climate change aid and a registry to note actions taken by developing countries to cut emissions, Essop said. Countries could also agree to a year that emissions must peak and a mandate to reach a treaty by an agreed future date, she said.
“We don’t trust our governments to do what they have to do by Durban,” Greenpeace International Climate Policy Coordinator Tove Ryding said in a Bonn interview. “Is the next conference going to be about how many people are going to go away from the Kyoto Protocol?”
Campaign groups are still calling for governments in the industrialized world to raise their ambition on emissions cuts. The development charity Oxfam said yesterday in a study that developing countries account for about 60 percent of emissions reductions currently pledged.
Salvage Talks
Figueres said envoys are trying to salvage the Kyoto talks by showing flexibility.
“Countries are being more creative and are beginning to say ‘OK, we understand that a second commitment period would not be able to be identical to the first if only for the very reason that Japan, Russia and Canada will not participate,’” she said.
The world’s biggest emitters, the U.S. and China, aren’t bound by Kyoto, a reason cited by Japan in opposing a second commitment period. A new round of targets for the 27-nation European Union and other countries is still possible, Figueres said in an interview.
“If that’s what the countries want, I certainly won’t stop them,” she said. “The EU has been pretty public about saying they would commit to a second commitment period under certain conditions. The key is to explore those conditions. I’m assuming they’d not want to do it all alone.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Reed Landberg at landberg@bloomberg.net
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