President Vladimir Putin refused on Monday to commit Russia to ratifying the Kyoto treaty designed to cut global warming, backtracking on previous pledges and causing alarm in the European Union and among environmental groups.
Opening a conference on climate change in Moscow, Putin said Russia’s decision would be in its ”national interests”, reflecting a debate in the country that some warming might be of benefit by allowing more grain to be grown.
”There is an insistent call for Russia to ratify the Kyoto protocol as soon as possible. The government is closely studying this question. A decision will be taken when this work is finished.”
Putin added that more research into climate change was needed. Such a comment will cause delight in Washington, which has been trying to persuade the Russian president to join United States President George Bush in repudiating the treaty.
Only Russia is now required to ratify the Kyoto protocol to the climate change convention to begin the process of legally enforceable reductions of greenhouse gases in the developed world.
The EU, Japan and the rest of the developed world, minus the US and Australia, adopted the agreement three years ago, but if Russia changed its mind Kyoto would be dead.
To bring the agreement into force, the countries causing 55% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have to sign up. But with the US and Russia not included that would be impossible.
Putin echoed Bush’s attitude on Monday when he said: ”Modern science needs to determine the actual degree of danger posed by global climate change. Scientists should also help answer another crucial question about the limits of the impact of industry on the climate system.”
Chris Davies, a member of the European Parliament’s climate change delegation, reflected the EU’s dismay.
”This is an extraordinary display of bad faith by President Putin that will sour his relations with the EU.
”For months Russia has insisted that it will eventually ratify the Kyoto protocol. It must be hoped that this announcement signals a last-minute attempt at brinkmanship to extract further financial concessions out of the EU rather than heralding the collapse of the world’s only agreement to curb global warming.
”The fear among European politicians is that President Putin is responding to behind-the-scenes pressure from the US. If so he will damage the long-term interests of his country.”
Russia was keen to ratify Kyoto because it thought it could make money from the treaty. Russia is allowed to produce a certain amount of carbon, but the collapse of the economy in 1990 meant that it never reached its agreed quota.
The surplus carbon credits could be sold to other countries that were overproducing, netting Moscow millions of pounds. However, without the US, which was expected to be the biggest buyer of these credits, it is hard to know how much Russia can now be expected to make.
Russian officials had sounded more upbeat about ratifying the treaty. The deputy minister for natural resources, Irina Osokina, said recently: ”My ministry has sent the documents necessary for ratification to the government. Both the ministry and Parliament are sure that the documents will be supported by the government.”
Russian cynicism over the treaty’s real benefits to its economy and environment still runs high, though.
Yuri Israel, the former head of the Russian meteorological system, said there were big dangers in environmental damage but that, at its current industrial capacity, Russia could sell its right to pollute to other countries for ”$4 to one tonne of carbon dioxide”.
MP Viacheslav Nikonov said by ratifying the protocol ”we can simply sell our future economic growth for a price we cannot even calculate yet”.
But others said Russia’s stalling destroyed its credibility. A former minister of ecology, Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, said: ”A long-winding path to ratification practically is the same as refusal and would give Europe the pretext to begin seriously to think: can it really do business with Russia?”
Yet the effects of global warming may already be apparent. The second city of St Petersburg, the president’s home town, is erecting flood barriers. Rising tides threaten the city in the next decade. — Guardian Unlimited Â