ENVIRONMENT:

Global Warming: Can Kyoto Accord Really Help?

The treaty’s main significance lies in the fact that it recognizes that legally binding international action to tackle global warming is required, by reducing the release of "greenhouse gases" into the atmosphere. There is now no doubt that such action is needed urgently, and is becoming more necessary by the day.

The concentration of greenhouse gases--primarily carbon dioxide (CO2) from the burning of fossil fuels, as well as emissions of methane, nitrous oxides, water vapor and other gases--in the atmosphere is rapidly rising. These gases trap heat and cause global warming.

In 2001, the 2500 scientists from around 100 countries who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warned that, unless greenhouse gas levels are stabilized, Earth's average temperature will rise by up to 5.8EC by the end of the century. According to the IPCC figures, if unchecked, CO2 levels in the air will be between 650 and 970 parts per million (ppm). To stabilize CO2 at 450 ppm (twice the pre-industrial level), which would limit global warming to about 2EC, total global greenhouse gas emissions must be cut by 60-80% of today’s emissions within 50 years at the latest.

The IPCC forecasts, on the assumption that the Antarctic and Arctic ice caps will remain constant, a sea level rise of between 20 centimeters and almost 1 meter by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not significantly reduced. There will be more severe and widespread flooding, more extreme storms and other weather events, as well as more droughts. The poorest countries would be hit hardest and would be the least able to adapt.

The news that the Kyoto accord is to be implemented has raised hopes among the world’s people that governments are now finally going to unite to take meaningful action to prevent this global environmental catastrophe. For many people, the belligerent long-term refusal of the US and Australian governments to join the treaty--or even make an unambiguous statement that industry-induced global warming is taking place--has meant that the demand "Sign Kyoto" has been understood to mean the same thing as "Stop global warming."

So, is the Kyoto treaty really the answer to the looming crisis? Unfortunately, not only are the treaty’s formal greenhouse gas emission reduction targets minuscule compared to what is actually required, the corporate-friendly market-based mechanisms contained in the treaty to achieve these cuts are counterproductive.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, the industrialised countries (referred to as Annex One countries), which have historically been and remain the major emitters of CO2, are required to cut their greenhouse gas emissions on average to just 5.2% below their 1990 levels. Each particular country has its own individual target, with some (such as Norway and Ireland) even being permitted to increase emissions. They have until 2012 to achieve this modest task. However, despite the need to achieve a 60-80% reduction in emissions by 2050, no further reduction targets or timetables are yet established for beyond 2012.

The Kyoto treaty’s "flexible mechanisms" provide plenty of scope for rich-country governments to engage in "creative accounting." These devices allow governments to claim reductions in their country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions even though no actual reductions may have taken place. It is even possible that a country could increase its greenhouse gas emissions and still be credited with a reduction.

Emissions trading will allow Annex One countries that have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions below that required under their own Kyoto targets to sell their remaining "right to pollute" credits to countries that cannot or don’t want to keep their Kyoto promises. While this might make some sense if the countries selling credits had genuinely reduced emissions, it should be remembered that the Kyoto baseline of 1990 conveniently ignores the fact that after 1991, the economies of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (including East Germany) collapsed, resulting in a 40% reduction in emissions from those countries. Russia and the Ukraine will soon be able to sell other industrialised countries the right to increase,their greenhouse gas emissions by that amount.

Individual corporations will also be allowed to buy and sell the right to right to pollute now that European carbon markets officially began operations in January.

The so-called Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) will allow Annex One governments and corporations to earn emission credits for investing in projects that claim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. For example, a CDM project might allow the New Zealand government to finance a factory producing energy-efficient appliances in India, but not do it at home; or BHP Billiton might construct wind generators in Mozambique but continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere from its operations in Australia and South Africa. Another favourite will be for the First World to plant fast-growing, environmentally suspect tree plantations in poor countries and then count the CO2 absorbed towards their emissions "reductions."

Another likely result will be that First World governments and corporations will dump obsolete technology on the Third World as they replace theirs with new-generation plants and equipment. Because this out-of-date technology may be "cleaner" than existing Third World factories and power plants, the First World will be awarded greenhouse credits, while the Third World will be stuck with obsolete (and uncompetitive) infrastructure considered too dirty for the West.

As Belén Balanyá, Ann Doherty, Olivier Hoedeman, Adam Ma'anit and Erik Wesselius, from Corporate Europe Observatory, note: "These policies would effectively turn greenhouse gases into commodities, locking-in existing North-South inequities in the use of natural resources and opening up many new and harmful profit-making opportunities for transnational corporations--essentially creating a new market out of thin air. Through these schemes, corporations and Northern governments will be entitled to buy countless cheap emission credits from the South, through projects of an often exploitative nature, thereby imposing on the South what the India-based Centre for Science and Environment refers to as 'carbon colonialism.' Furthermore, all of the `low-hanging fruit,' or cheap credits, will have been harvested by the North when it comes time for Southern countries to reduce their own emissions, saddling them with only the most expensive options for any future reduction commitments they might make.’‘

Another handy accounting "mechanism" is the provision that allows Annex One countries to avoid making genuine industrial emissions cuts is by being allowed to count CO2 absorbed by domestic "carbon sinks"--from reduced land clearing, increased natural forest cover, new tree planting and soil conservation methods--towards reduction targets. However, ways to accurately quantify and verify exactly how much CO2 is removed from the atmosphere through these mechanisms are extremely unreliable.

The irony is that these measures were included in Kyoto largely at the insistence of the US and Australian governments as the price for their participation, but then both governments withdrew from the protocol anyway after delaying the flawed treaty’s final emergence for almost a decade. The refusal of the US, by far the world’s largest greenhouse gas polluter, leaves a gaping hole in the treaty’s coverage.

According to the New Scientist website, these loopholes and scams will mean that even if the industrialised countries achieve Kyoto’s 5.2% reduction on paper, the real-world reduction will be more likely to be 1.5%.

It is unlikely that most Annex One countries will genuinely meet their meagre Kyoto commitments without making liberal use of these accounting tricks. As Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, conceded in a December 6 opening speech to the Buenos Aires meeting of Kyoto signatories, since 1990 annual greenhouse gas emissions from the "highly industrialised countries" have increased by "more than 7%."

The European Environment Agency reported in May 2003 that emissions of greenhouse gases from the European Union (EU) had increased in 2000 and 2001. Under Kyoto, the EU as whole must reduce emissions by 8%. However, the EU’s total CO2 emissions jumped 1.6% in 2001, while total greenhouse gas emissions increased 1%. "The latest figures show that 10 of the [original] member states are heading towards overshooting their agreed share by a wide margin--Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain," the EEA reported. France was also likely to fail to meet its target by "a very narrow margin." Only Sweden, Germany and Britain were on track, the EEA said.

Japan, which pledged to cut greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990 levels, had increased emissions by 8% as of the end of 2003. Canada’s annual emissions are 17% higher than they were in 1990, far above its promised 6% reduction.

The United States, which prior to pulling out of Kyoto Protocol in 2001 had committed itself to a 7% reduction on 1990 levels, increased its overall greenhouse gas emissions by 0.7% in 2002, bringing the total increase since 1990 to 13%. US CO2 emissions increased 16.7% between 1990 and 2002, according to International Energy Agency figures released on December 7.

Meanwhile, the Australian government has showed just how effectively the greenhouse gas emissions books can be cooked. In December, environment minister Ian Campbell released the Australian Greenhouse Office’s report "Tracking to the Kyoto Target 2004," in which it claimed that Australia remains on track to meet the promise it made in 1997, before it also abandoned Kyoto, to limit greenhouse gas emissions to 8% above 1990 levels. In fact, Australia’s industrial greenhouse gas emissions have continued to soar since 1990, with the report stating that they may be 23% above 1990 levels by 2020. The Greenhouse Office also warned that actual emissions between 2008 and 2012 may "differ significantly" with its estimates. The government’s rosy predictions were based on the claim that reduced land clearing had offset increased industrial emissions.