Failure at The Hague

IT IS A measure of the inability of the international community to look beyond the immediate future that Governments of the world - those in the industrial world in particular - are still unable to decide how to reduce the emission of the greenhouse gases (GHGs), which at current levels of discharge are expected to raise the world's temperature by 1.5 to 6 degrees Celsius by the end of the 21st century. The most recent example of this attitude is the failure of the United Nations climate conference in The Hague to agree on something as basic as the mechanisms for achieving a very modest reduction in emissions over the next decade.

Where until a few years ago there was some scientific ambiguity about whether or not the world was really becoming warmer, there is now almost a consensus that global warming is taking place and that the cause is the human-induced emission of GHGs such as carbon dioxide. The increasingly common occurrence of climatic events of great severity may or may not be the result of global warming, but what is certain is that higher temperatures will lead to a rise in sea-levels which by the end of the 21st century will have flooded low-level coastal areas and completely submerged many oceanic islands around the world. The pace and spread of this human-induced alteration of climate will be far greater than any nature-induced change that has taken place in the history of the Earth. There is also an urgency because the momentum of global warming is such that action now will have an impact only years later. Yet, the fact that the disasters that are going to visit the Earth will take place decades from now has occasioned a somnolence on the part of Governments that can only be described as a callous indifference. The main responsibility for reducing emissions has been placed on the very countries that have contributed most to the build up of GHGs in the atmosphere - the industrialised countries. However, a decade after the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, global emissions continue to increase. The Kyoto Protocol of 1997 set a reduction target by 2008-2012 of an average of 5.2 per cent over 1990 levels for 38 industrialised countries. But none of these countries has ratified the Protocol because they have not decided

on what mechanisms to use to reduce emissions.

The Hague conference collapsed because the E.U. was unwilling to accept the U.S. insistence on an indirect reduction of emissions. Instead of taking measures to lower domestic industrial and automobile emissions, the U.S. insisted on meeting a larger part of its target by giving credit to the absorption of carbon dioxide by its forests, by trading ``emission credits'' with countries that have met their commitments and by financing pollution control projects in developing countries. These are clearly all backdoor emission reduction strategies, whose positive contribution is also uncertain. It is, for instance, still not clear how much carbon is absorbed by vegetation. Since no agreement was reached on the mechanisms there was no question of any progress on the measures for monitoring of compliance and penalties for failure, the other items on the agenda. In spite of the fact that time is running out to meet the commitments for 2012, Governments chose to give up on the issue at The Hague rather than take any hard decisions. The delegates decided to ``suspend'' the conference in the hope that an agreement can be reached when the meeting is re-convened in the middle of 2001. If measurable progress has not been made over the past decade, it is difficult to see Governments being able to lay the ground for a deal over the next six months.

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