UN climate report clarifies "sinks" - Swedish leak
Date: 11-Apr-01
Country: SWEDEN
The U.N. paper outlines how countries could meet targets to reduce greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (CO2) by counting their forests as "sinks" which absorb the CO2 emissions produced by human activity, the Swedish official leaked to Reuters.
"The paper spells out that sinks could be used to meet targets to cut emissions of carbon dioxide, by how much, and says what type of projects would be allowed," the official said.
The head of the U.N.'s panel for climate change, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, told Reuters in an interview a week ago he hoped the paper, a policy compromise, could save the Kyoto treaty to cut greenhouse gases despite U.S. objections.
U.N.-led climate talks to cut greenhouse gases broke down in November last year because of a dispute how much importance should be placed on the role of sinks.
The United States, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and Canada argued for them to be given greater weight in calculating countries' quotas of emissions than the EU would accept.
The U.N. proposals would allow industrialised countries with reduction targets to count their encouragement of sinks in developing countries as a contribution towards meeting their own emissions targets, the official said.
The United States said last month it would abandon the Kyoto Protocol, arguing it would do too much economic harm to the United States to cut CO2 unless forest sinks were counted in the calculations.
"We have just received the paper and it's hard to say how much they've changed the targets for the different countries and what concessions have been made to the USA," the official said.
He said representatives from the EU were scheduled to meet in Brussels during the day to discuss the new paper.