Industrialised countries bound by the Kyoto Protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5 per cent up to 2012 have reached a non-binding agreement to target new cuts of 25 to 40 per cent by 2020 in an extension of the treaty.
Meeting in Vienna last week amongst more than 150 nations in the UN climate convention (UNFCCC), the rich countries agreed a position that will be taken to the main event – the convention’s annual meeting in Bali in December. It is here that Kyoto proponents hope to make substantial progress towards a final post-2012 agreement to extend Kyoto into a second commitment period.
"Achieving the lowest stabilisation level assessed by the IPCC to date and its corresponding potential damage limitation would require Annex I Parties [industrialised nations] as a group to reduce emissions in a range of 25 to 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020", the Vienna agreement stated.
The meeting agreed such a target was necessary if global warming was to be constrained to between 2 and 2.4 degrees Celsius, a range seen by scientists as the limit that can be tolerated before dangerous climate change sets in. The meeting officially recognised the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 2007 findings that global greenhouse emissions needed to be stabilised in the next 10 to 15 years and then be substantially reduced by mid century.
"This is a first step that has laid the groundwork for the Bali conference," said Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UNFCCC. "It shows that Parties have the necessary level of ambition to move this work forward." Russia, Japan, Canada, New Zealand and Switzerland, however, had opposed the target but were outvoted. They have attracted criticism from environment groups such as the Climate Action Network and WWF which welcomed the agreement. They warned that the targets must be extended to developing nations in Bali for an effective global response to climate change.
The United States and Australia were the only two industrialised nations not involved in the talks, having not ratified the Kyoto treaty. Both nations are pushing an alternative non-targets-based approach to emissions reductions which will figure high on the agenda of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Sydney this week. The Bush Administration says it will produce its suggestions for international action following a meeting of major emitters in Washington at the end of the month.
For these reasons, many observers believe that concluding a post-2012 global commitment along the lines agreed in Vienna is unlikely in Bali. UN efforts toward a strengthened global agreement have up to now been stymied by the opposition of the US which says other big emitters like China and India should also have to commit to emissions reductions.
Bloomberg, Canada.com, Environment News Service, Reuters 31/8/07-1/9/07