International Climate Talks Open in Bonn
BONN, Germany, June 13, 2000 (ENS) - A week of official talks in
preparation for this November's major inter-governmental climate
change conference in the Hague has kicked off in Bonn, Germany,
with governments still far apart on key issues.
European environmental groups today cried foul, claiming that the
protocol is "off course and heading for the rocks" after five
days of informal talks last week to prepare for the official
session.
Big things are expected from the November meeting after
governments agreed in 1998 to make it the deadline for finalising
operational rules governing implementation of the Kyoto Protocol.
Though industrialised countries have already committed to cut
greenhouse gas emissions by the five year period 2008 to 2012,
the detailed rules governing this process will be crucial in
determining what it will mean in practice.
Reflecting the high political sensitivities and complexities of
issues still outstanding, the UN's official preview of this
week's Bonn talks was downbeat. The negotiations would "focus on
advancing understanding and narrowing differences," it said.
A key issue at the talks is detailed greenhouse gas accounting
and liability rules. A flashpoint in this context is what
treatment should be given to carbon "sinks" such as forestry.
These will be included in countries' greenhouse gas accounts
alongside industrial emissions, but exactly how remains to be
decided.
Countries with large forests are pushing for generous allowances
for their ability to soak up carbon.
Environmental groups, in particular, are claiming that this could
undermine the protocol's basic aim of achieving reductions in the
six greenhouse gases linked to global warming.
Compliance mechanisms are likewise a hot potato, with a wide
range of views in evidence on what should happen if countries
fail to live up to their greenhouse gas reduction commitments or
other protocol rules.
The European Union and some other countries are supporting tough
consequences, including barring countries from participating in
the protocol's "flexible mechanisms" such as emissions trading.
Other industrialised countries are seeking to avoid this. One
contentious proposal is for countries to be able to "borrow"
emissions from a future commitment period if they fail to achieve
committed cuts in the current one.
How the flexible mechanisms of emissions trading, "joint
implementation" between industrialised countries and the "clean
development mechanism" for funding emissions reductions projects
in developing countries should be organised are also highly
controversial.
The European Union is pushing for limits on the use of flexible
mechanisms, but other industrialised countries are adamantly
opposed to the idea of limits.
With enthusiastic backing from environmental groups, a majority
of European Union countries want nuclear power to be excluded
from the clean development mechanism, but with other countries
strongly oppose the exclusion of nuclear power.
The generation of nuclear power does not emit greenhouse gases,
but the technologies of spent fuel reprocessing and long term
waste storage have not been perfected to the point where
radiation will not escape into the environment.
SOURCE: Environment News Service (ENS)
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