Without U.S., Climate Talks Push On

by Danielle Knight

The United States is merely observing negotiations due to end Nov. 9 in Marrakesh but the European Union (EU), Japan, and other countries "are moving forward," says Jennifer Morgan, climate change program director at the World Wildlife Fund. These countries are drafting domestic legislation to ratify and implement the 1997 treaty, she adds.

The Kyoto Protocol, named after the Japanese city where it was drawn up, calls for the 38 industrialized nations to reduce, by 2012, their combined annual greenhouse gas emissions to an average of 5.2 percent below their 1990 levels.

President George W. Bush has refused to support the treaty, calling it unfair because it does not require developing nations to commit to binding reduction targets.

The European Commission, however, is calling on member states to ratify the Protocol by mid-June 2002, in time to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, where a voluntary version of the Protocol was first drafted.

Countries now are negotiating brass-tacks issues including how compliance with the treaty's legally binding rules will be monitored and enforced. "That system will form the fundamental building blocks of the Kyoto Protocol," says Ram Uppuluri, an attorney with Environmental Defense, an advocacy group based here.

Negotiators also are discussing the mandate and regional make-up of the executive board that would oversee the accord.

"We're encouraged by the parties' determination to get things done," says Nathalie Eddy, a climate campaigner with Greenpeace International.

WWF's Morgan, however, acknowledges that despite their optimism, environmentalists are keeping a close watch on Russia, Japan and Canada to make sure they do not "backtrack" on commitments to push through with the process.

Substantial differences persist, she says. Russia, for example, has said it must get additional credit for maintaining its vast forests -- a natural sink for the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide -- if it is to support the treaty; Germany opposes this.

At least 55 nations, including countries that account for at least 55 percent of the industrialized world's 1990 level of carbon dioxide emissions, must ratify the agreement for it to be become binding. Without U.S. participation, ratification hinges on Russian and Japanese support.

Japan has said that it wants to see the agreement enter into force by 2002 but its position on ratification remains unclear since it had insisted this would only happen if the United States also went along. Tokyo is staying in the game thanks to strong Japanese public support for the treaty, say environmentalists.

Even if the treaty is ratified, greenhouse gas emissions actually could rise 2.5 percent by 2010 if the Washington remains on the sidelines, according to Greenpeace International. This is because the United States, which accounts for 4.6 percent of the world's population, produces about one-fourth of all emissions.

The irony of the treaty, adds Alden Meyer, director of government relations at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is that the United States strongly influenced the shape of the Protocol. The Clinton administration insisted, for example, that it include a scheme to allow countries to trade emissions allowances.

Meyer says he believes that nations involved in the current talks are trying to avoid decisions that would thwart future participation by Washington.

With high-level ministerial negotiations scheduled for the coming week, Uppuluri at Environmental Defense says the Marrakesh round of talks will only be deemed successful "if it paves the way for ratification."