Deep divisions between advocates and opponents of the Kyoto protocol prevented an international climate conference from reaching consensus on Friday on the pact to curb greenhouse-gas emissions, whose existence hinges entirely on Russia’s ratification.
Russian President Vladimir Putin set the United Nations World Climate Change Conference off to a raucous start on Monday by saying his Cabinet hadn’t yet made up its mind whether to ratify Kyoto. Putin economic adviser Andrei Illarionov then launched a scathing attack on the pact, saying it looked unfeasible and lacks a proper scientific foundation.
The statements vexed Kyoto’s European and UN backers who accused Russia of backtracking on its earlier pledge to ratify the pact. The European Union mission to Russia on Friday issued an angry statement, quoting EU environment commissioner Margot Wallstroem warning Russia that it would lose politically and economically if it fails to ratify Kyoto.
Illarionov responded in kind to the EU criticism and heaped more scorn on Kyoto on Friday, saying the pact would slow down economic growth of EU member states.
Illarionov, who plays a key role in setting Russia’s economic policy, said the nation’s accession to Kyoto would jeopardise Putin’s goal of doubling gross domestic product in 10 years by forcing it to cut industrial emissions.
”The Kyoto protocol will stymie economic growth,” Illarionov told journalists. ”It will doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness.”
The 1997 Kyoto protocol calls for countries to reduce their level of greenhouse-gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2012. If a country exceeds the emissions level, it could be forced to cut back industrial production.
To come into force, the 1997 protocol must be ratified by no fewer than 55 countries, accounting for at least 55% of global emissions in 1990. That minimum can be reached only with Russia’s ratification because the United States has rejected the treaty.
Illarionov argued that since the US, China and other nations that rejected the protocol now account for nearly 70% of global emissions, the pact will fail in curbing them anyway.
But the protocol’s proponents argued Kyoto was a vital first step in cutting emissions, and warned that failure to quickly put it into force would trigger a dangerous, steep rise in greenhouse gas concentrations that would be far more difficult to control in the future. They also pointed at economic benefits Russia could reap from the agreement by attracting vital foreign investment in its energy sector.
Illarionov and other Kyoto critics dismissed such possible benefits as illusory, saying that although Russia’s emissions have fallen by 32% since 1990 and the nation is allowed to stick to its 1990 level, the industrial development would soon leave Russia without any excessive emission quota to sell to others under the Kyoto-sponsored trading scheme.
Still, Putin told a meeting on Friday organised by the World Economic Forum that Moscow would ”be reluctant to make decisions on just financial considerations”.
”We should be guided primarily by more noble ideas rather than the consideration of mundane, quick economic benefit,” he said.
Representatives of global environmental groups and other NGOs, who attended a social forum on climate change on the conference’s sidelines, urged bringing Kyoto into force ”as urgently as possible”.
”Unless we act now, forced adaptation to the consequences of climate change in the near future may become an intolerable burden on humanity,” they said on Friday in a concluding statement.
The climate pact’s foes countered by saying it has not been conclusively proven that the greenhouse gas emissions were a top factor behind global warming, and that volcanic eruptions, the oceans’ impact and solar activity need to be more thoroughly analysed.
Kyoto supporters and foes accused each other of being driven by political and business interests and ignoring scientific data, and heated arguments dogged the conference until its closing minutes.
The conference’s final statement tried to avoid the controversy, but Kyoto’s supporters succeeded in pointing at greenhouse gas emissions as a key force behind global warming. — Sapa-AP