The balance of international climate negotiations has shifted with the resounding defeat of the conservative Howard government in national elections in Australia. On the eve of the annual UN climate convention meeting in Bali, Indonesia, on which hopes for a global climate agreement hang, one of the two developing nations refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol will now switch to the pro-Kyoto camp under a new leader, the Labor Party's Kevin Rudd.
"It's a very important event in the international climate debate, and for Bali. It will leave Bush and the United States more isolated," the political director of Greenpeace International, Shane Rattenburg, told Agence France Presse.
In what was billed by some as the world’s first climate change election, incumbent Prime Minister John Howard was handed a thumping at the ballot box. The reality is that industrial relations and economic management were the major election issues, but climate change has been a very close third in voters’ minds, opinion polls show.
Rudd has already signalled that industrial relations and climate change are the urgent priorities for the new government. This will see climate policy change significantly in Australia, the world’s largest greenhouse emitter per capita. Labor has long indicated that it supports Kyoto and would move quickly to ratify it if it came to power.
"To our friends and allies around the world, I look forward as the next Prime Minister of Australia to working with them in dealing with the great challenges which our world now faces," Rudd said in his victory speech. Rudd will go to Bali to underscore Australia's new position and has said he wants to see the developing world take on commitments in a post-2012 agreement.
A 20 per cent renewable energy target for 2020, an emissions trading scheme by 2010 and the prohibition of nuclear power were among Labor's campaign pledges.
Howard was a staunch critic of the Kyoto Protocol and backed US President George Bush all the way on the rejection of binding emission targets on developed nations only. But he was caught out politically in 2006 when a record drought and a water crisis in the south east of the country rang alarm bells for Australians over their climatic future.
This is one of a number of issues that appear to have brought Australians to think that Howard was not the right leader for the challenges of the 21st Century. As a result, he saw his government swept from office yesterday and also faces the almost unprecedented prospect of losing his own seat in parliament.
"It's great news for the Kyoto Protocol," Rattenburg said.
Indonesian environment minister Rachmat Witoelar told Melbourne's Age newspaper that a Rudd victory would be “heaven-sent” for the Bali negotiations over which he will preside. He described the change of government as “positive for Bali and for the whole world, because it is a measure of togetherness that Australia would come on board and we will invite America also."
But the change of stance by Australia is unlikely to be enough to sway the US at Bali. A major breakthrough in agreeing targets for the next round of the treaty that would take effect in 2013 is still more likely at a later date. But it does raise the prospects that over the next year and into 2009, when Bush leaves office, that a new consensus will emerge on climate action among the world’s big emitting nations.
Agence France-Presse 24/11/07, The Age 25/11/07
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Key nations shifting as Bali nears