Russia seeks wider "sinks" use in climate talks
Date: 28-Jun-01
Country: NETHERLANDS
Author: Matt Daily
Russia was setting out its position at high-level talks in the Netherlands aimed at paving the way for a meeting in Bonn next month to shore up the 1997 Kyoto pact on global warming, which the United States has rejected.
"Russia demands...to have more forest and (farm) land being accounted," German Environment Minister Juergen Trittin told Reuters on the sidelines of the talks. There was no immediate confirmation from Russian delegates.
The reported Russian move comes two weeks after the head of the U.N. climate change forum, Dutch Environment Minister Jan Pronk, issued proposals that would allow Japan to claim wide areas of forest and farmland toward its pollution targets laid out under Kyoto.
The move to accommodate Japan was designed to keep Tokyo's support for the protocol following the U.S. President George W. Bush's rejection of the pact earlier this year.
Keeping the support of both Japan and Russia are seen as key to achieving ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, which calls for industrialised states to cut carbon dioxide emissions by an average of five percent from 1990 levels by 2010.
Carbon dioxide emissions, partly from the burning of fossil fuels, have been blamed by many scientists for contributing to global warming, which is expected to boost temperatures in the coming decades, raising sea levels and sharply altering weather patterns.
KYOTO TARGETS
Russia is expected to meet its Kyoto targets easily, since economic decline there has trimmed industrial output of carbon dioxide, but wider usage of "carbon sinks" would allow it to sell spare capacity to other states, Trittin said.
Such emissions trading could be lucrative for Russia and useful for rich industrialised states that would otherwise fall short of their Kyoto goals.
Environmental groups have criticised the emissions trading component as a market in 'hot air,' but Trittin said there was strong support among some European countries for such a system.
"There are countries inside the EU who would need emissions trading to meet their Kyoto targets," he said.
The informal negotiations among dozens of countries were called by Pronk and began earlier this week. They are to end on Thursday.
A handful of environmental protesters gave Pronk a life preserver at a protest outside the meeting on Wednesday and called on all delegates to ratify the treaty.
Russia and Japan are seen as key to ratification of the Kyoto Protocol to make it legally binding. It must be ratified by 55 countries representing 55 percent of the global carbon dioxide output. Romania is currently the only industrialised state to have officially adopted the protocol.
Despite the Russian conditions, Trittin said he still saw a willingness by Russia to bring the protocol into force.
"It's very clear Russia wants ratification. The rumours that (Russian President Vladimir) Putin is standing aside with (U.S. President Bush) are not true," he said.
In an interview with the BBC, Japanese Environment Minister Yoriko Kawaguchi reiterated earlier statements that Japan would continue trying to bring the United States back into the treaty, but did not comment on whether Tokyo would back the treaty without the participation of Washington.
However, she did say Japan was in line with the European Union and other nations in trying to make the protocol legally binding next year.
"We are committed to make it into force by 2002," she said.