By Marcela Valente
BUENOS AIRES, Nov 1 (IPS) - Delegates from 175 countries are to
meet at The Hague in mid-November to hammer out details for
satisfying commitments made for curbing emissions of climate-
changing greenhouse gases, but environmental activists warn that
the discussions leading up to the conference look more like
business deals.
Juan Carlos Villalonga, in charge of energy affairs for the
Argentine office of Greenpeace, the international environmental
watchdog, told IPS that on the eve of the Sixth Conference of
Parties (COP6) to the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change, ''the debate does not involve the commitments,
but rather how to evade them without having to pay.''
''We environmentalists have a position in the debate that cannot
be considered trivial, because the European Union (EU) and island
nations agree with our proposals. But there is a very
strong mercantilist conception among those who want to
participate in the convention to do business or make money,''
Villalonga said.
''The Convention (on climate change) is no longer a forum about a
very serious global environmental issue - the warming of the
atmosphere - but has become an arena in which one can
sell commodities and do business with sales of forests, land and
technologies,'' he pointed out.
Most scientists around the world agree that several types of
gases, especially carbon dioxide, accumulate in the earth's
atmosphere and cause the so-called greenhouse effect. In other
words, they trap solar radiation, causing average global
temperatures to rise.
This warming causes polar ice to melt and sea levels to rise,
which in turn produces flooding. The process also provokes
extreme weather phenomena, such as droughts and hurricanes,
and contributes to the spread of warm-climate diseases like
malaria, and to the extinction of plant and animal species.
The concentration of emissions produced by human activities has
meant that the average temperature increase over the last decade
was the highest of the millennium, say experts in climate
change research.
The objective of COP6 is to push for compliance with commitments
to reduce greenhouse gas emissions agreed in a series of meetings
beginning in 1995.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
(UNFCCC) was approved in 1992, at the United Nations Earth Summit
in Rio de Janeiro, and entered into force in 1994. One year
later, a series of annual meetings began with the participation
of the Convention's signatories.
In the third meeting of the parties, held in 1997 in the Japanese
city of Kyoto, delegates established quantitative emissions
reduction goals for the industrialised North, but this agreement,
known as the Kyoto Protocol, has yet to be ratified.
Carbon dioxide is responsible for 72 percent of the global
warming process and is produced by a wide range of economic
activities and in all countries, though volumes of emissions vary
depending on each country's level of development.
Methane and nitrous oxide also contribute to global warming, as
do other gases originating from activities in industry, trade,
farming and livestock.
''Unlike the emissions that affect the ozone layer, which are
limited to a few controllable economic activities, carbon
dioxide, which is released in the combustion of fossil fuels -
coal, petroleum, gasoline -, affects an enormous range of
interests in all countries,'' said Villalonga.
Industries such as steel, air-conditioning and heating, aluminium
casting, cement, petroleum and gasoline production, and
transportation are among the leading producers of carbon
dioxide.
In 1999, 175 countries ratified the UNFCCC. The maximum body of
the Convention is the Conference of Parties, which meets once
each year to evaluate the accords and compliance with meeting
emissions reduction targets.
The Kyoto Protocol, meanwhile, requires the nations of the
industrialised North to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by
the period 2008 to 2012 to at least five percent below the
levels recorded in 1990 in each country.
But the only ones that have ratified the Protocol so far are
developing countries, and even they have done so in insufficient
numbers to give the document the force of international law.
For Villalonga, if there were greater political will to curb
emissions, the Protocol could be a simple list in which
industrialised countries would set abatement percentages and
timeframes.
But the document is complex, given that, among other measures, it
creates ''flexible mechanisms'' for meeting the emissions
reduction targets.
''The incorporation of those mechanisms is the target of a great
deal of criticism because many believe they are loopholes for
non-compliance,'' Raśl Estrada Oyuela told IPS. In Kyoto,
he served as the president of the plenary of delegates who
approved the protocol and was a key participant in the prior
negotiations.
''The ideal'' would have been to prevent the inclusion of the
flexible mechanisms, but the need to involve the top missions
producers, like the United States, meant that realism took
precedence over idealism, commented Estrada Oyuela, chief of the
Argentine delegation that will travel to The Hague for COP6.
In 1990, the United States was responsible for 37 percent of the
emissions coming from industrialised countries. Today its portion
has reached 40 percent.
''If you take the whole world into account, the United States
produces 25 percent of the total greenhouse gas emissions,''
Estrada Oyuela pointed out.
However, the real reduction of emissions by Germany and Great
Britain, and the less-than-expected growth of emissions in
Eastern Europe, meant an average decline of six percent from
1990 to 1998.
The EU believes it necessary to require the leading emissions
producers to meet their abatement quotas even though the decline
in emissions in other countries permits a reasonable balance. But
the United States does not share that position.
One of the Protocol's flexible mechanisms allows for the joint
implementation of reduction measures, which permits and
industrialised country to exceed its emissions quota in exchange
for the curbing of emissions in another industrialised nation.
Additionally, the treaty's Clean Development Mechanism allows
industrialised nations to compensate for their emissions by
investing in the developing South's forestation projects or new
technologies, whether for developing renewable energy sources or
improving the efficiency of traditional sources.
Emissions trading, meanwhile, means the North can achieve its
reduction targets by purchasing credits for carbon dioxide
reductions from other countries. This system today primarily
benefits the nations of the former socialist bloc.
Because the economic growth of the formerly socialist countries
of Eastern Europe over the last decade was slower than predicted,
their industrial emissions were less than was expected when the
Kyoto targets were set.
As a result, those countries have a surplus of what is known as
''hot air'' that they can trade with the leading polluters, which
would then not have to pursue emissions reduction measures at
home.
Environmentalists say these formulas lend themselves to business
deals. In fact, Estrada Oyuela admitted that Argentina's official
position is to try to attract investment from the North for
forestry projects and technology, a stance that is shared by many
other nations in the region.
Greenpeace believes the initiative covering ''carbon sinks''
(forests and other plantings that serve to absorb carbon) is not
the right answer. The ideal would be to invest in the development
of technologies for renewable energy sources, such as wind and
solar, argues the environmental organisation.
But in Argentina, ''the agenda for the conference is being
drafted by the forestry lobbyists,'' whose pressure tactics
coincide with the official policy to bring in investments and
sign business agreements, according to Greenpeace.
Thus, environmental groups do not think COP6 at The Hague will
result in any major advances toward curbing climate change,
especially given that the meeting comes on the heels of
presidential elections in the United States, one of the leading
actors in this film that, for now, has no end.
(END/IPS/tra-so/mv/ff/ld/00)
SOURCE: Inter Press Service (IPS)
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