GLOBAL CLIMATE DEBATE

ANALYSIS: The Kyoto Trap

The Kyoto Protocol – is it an absolute must in the global climate battle – or an idea whose time has long passed? Or is it something more – a destructive cul-de-sac that has kept the world from really tackling climate change?

During the latest UN Framework Convention on Climate Change meeting in Bonn over the last two weeks, delegates once again took up extending Kyoto Protocol commitments beyond their current expiration date in 2012. Extending the protocol was one of two major negotiating “tracks” set up two and a half years ago in Bali – and neither one has been settled yet.

For Kyoto, the arguments haven’t changed much either.

Protocol advocates say it’s the only legally binding treaty in force that begins to restore equity worldwide. It requires the advanced – or Annex I – countries, the ones who industrialized first and emitted much of the carbon now causing atmospheric warming, to cut their carbon emissions first. Meanwhile, non-Annex I countries, the developing economies, get their turn at fossil-intensive development. The developed nations commit to transfer both money and technology to help the developing nations move to higher and more sustainable living standards.

Those who see the Protocol as lumbering toward inevitable extinction say it covers less than half of the world’s greenhouse emissions and is inadequate to tackle the climate challenge. In the dozen years since the Protocol was signed in Kyoto, emerging economy emissions have soared. Now four of the five top emitting nations are emerging economies. China is number one, the U.S. is number two. The U.S. has never ratified Kyoto, and it has been the largest player insisting that, while industrialized nations may be responsible for historic emissions, the world won’t solve climate change unless all major current emitters pitch in. The U.S. saw the Copenhagen Accord as a major accomplishment because it broke out of the idea that non-Annex I nations had no immediate responsibilities.
But many developing nations say rich nations’ failure to renew the protocol will mean catastrophe for their populations. That prediction has come especially from negotiators for island states and nations in Africa and south Asia that feel most exposed to rising sea levels and changing rainfall patterns.

Non-Annex I nations assert that Kyoto requires developed economies to cut their carbon emissions 25-40% (a few even call for 50%, all citing scenarios in UN climate change studies). In addition, they say Kyoto, and “social justice,” demand payment for the damage 100-200 years of fossil emissions from industrialized countries are inflicting on their climates and lands. They have variously demanded that Annex I countries devote 1% to 2% of their gross domestic products to helping poorer nations adapt – and send the funds without a lot of strings attached, not on a project basis through the World Bank or similar organizations. China and India have often been the spokesmen for the non-Annex I nations, even as their economies grew strongly.

And that is where Kyoto may become a cul-de-sac. Even sympathetic negotiators rate the chances of the U.S. and the EU cutting GHGs 40% and turning over anything close to 2% of their annual GDPs as nil.

But Kyoto advocates – even China – insist that Kyoto establishes their right to that money, and that insistence has become an article of faith. Under this tenet, Kyoto confirms their entitlement to emit whatever GHGs they need to in order to improve their peoples’ lifestyles. And more: it confirms they’re owed part of the riches created elsewhere based on fossil fuels, because the damage from fossil burning affects them but the benefits didn’t.

There is never discussion of any possible benefits from industrialization, such as improved agriculture and transportation that has let the least developed countries support far larger populations than ever in their histories. Instead, spokesmen for developing nations and allied advocacy groups say, in effect, “Our nations need do nothing about the climate until we’re paid what we’re owed.” But that has become a formula for business as usual. If the climate scientists are right, that is precisely what the world can least afford.

Even though the Copenhagen Accord was signed by world leaders in Denmark, including leaders of some of the largest emerging economies, for months developing nation negotiators fought including the accord in the UN negotiations. Instead, they campaigned to proceed from the Kyoto Protocol, arguing its legal framework gave them far more protection than Copenhagen’s voluntary promises. It may be the major accomplishment of the latest Bonn meeting that, with much quiet diplomacy, significant accord terms are now incorporated in the formal UN draft text, though that text is still in parallel negotiations with the talks to extend Kyoto.

Perhaps most telling for Kyoto’s fate: the European Union – the most active proponent of the protocol – is losing enthusiasm for going it alone, with officials citing the mounting emissions occurring outside Annex I countries. The EU says it will extend the Kyoto Protocol, but only in conjunction with a parallel treaty that brings in the U.S. – which never ratified Kyoto and isn’t likely to.

But everyone involved in the process seems to agree: getting anywhere in the global warming battle requires keeping the whole world involved. Kyoto is such an emotional issue for so many developing countries, that simply letting it lapse may not be an option either.