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A double-track approach is emerging as an alternative way to reduce carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions after 2012 following the expiration of the Kyoto Protocol to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
The approach calls for industrialized nations to further reduce greenhouse emissions as an expansion of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, and for developing countries to work out an international registration system for their voluntary reduction plans.
The idea is seen as a compromise between the interests of industrialized and developing countries. The former insist on the establishment of a comprehensive framework involving all affected nations while the latter see their respective voluntary commitments as sufficient to cut back on gas emissions.
International negotiations on future commitments to greenhouse gas reductions are expected to intensify when ad hoc working groups of the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC hold separate meetings starting Sunday in Germany.
Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta’s ambassador for climate change who chairs the Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action under the UNFCCC, published March 17 a “Chairman’s Note” that looked at each country’s proposals and summarized and analyzed their commonalities and differences.
Referring to developing countries’ emission cuts, Zammit Cutajar said in the note that a consensus was coalescing around a plan to establish a system under which these countries register what they regard to be appropriate voluntary reduction levels. Under the proposed system, each developing nation would declare a reduction plan to be implemented with help from industrialized countries.
The note acknowledges the progress being made by developed nations’ in mapping out individual reduction targets, and singles out the importance of the study being conducted by the ad hoc working group of the Kyoto Protocol.
The protocol’s working group was established in 2006, one year before the establishment of the UNFCCC working group that involves all nations–including the United States, which has yet to ratify the Kyoto Protocol–with the aim of creating a new framework. The protocol’s working group currently is studying how, and by how much, each country will cut emissions from 2013.
International commitments to greenhouse gas reduction, therefore, are being studied simultaneously by the two working groups.
The two-way international commitment idea is advocated by such emerging countries as South Africa, Brazil and India. Brazil is strongly against the need to draw up legal documents such as a new protocol to work out a new framework to incorporate reduction efforts by developing countries. It insists that approval by parties to the convention of a simpler and nonbinding arrangement is sufficient.
Thus, the emerging countries seem to be in favor of avoiding a new burden based on the contention that industrialized countries must bear a heavier responsibility than developing nations.
Japan objects to this standpoint. A senior official of the Environment Ministry said: “Emission cuts to be made by developing countries in line with a decision by Parties to the Convention, which has no legal binding, will not lead to reductions on a global scale. Nor will it be possible to guarantee reduction results from the United States, which has not ratified the Kyoto Protocol and thus doesn’t take part in discussions of the Kyoto Protocol’s ad hoc working group.”
This concern was echoed by a high-ranking official of the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry, who said, “The worst scenario would be if the current framework under which the United States, China and India have no obligations, remains intact.”
Tokyo has been seeking to establish a comprehensive framework that encompasses all countries. In future negotiations, Japan and other industrialized countries will call for hammering out a system that can ensure emission reduction efforts by developing countries.
Financial assistance and the transfer of technology to developing countries are essential to make this a success.
Industrial nations are studying concrete proposals to encourage greenhouse gas reduction efforts on the part of developing countries.
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