Bonn talks may yield little without political will

By C. Rammanohar Reddy

BONN, JULY 21. In negotiations that have been going on in the former capital of Germany for the past week, Ministers and officials are trying to operationalise the Kyoto Protocol; but it is not just the U.S. decision to withdraw from the global treaty on climate change that threatens the future of the agreement, other and older contentious issues have returned to haunt the current talks.

A senior European Union official involved in the negotiations, Mr. Olivier Deleuze, told a press conference today that ``the moment of truth'' to save the Bonn talks had arrived. The Bonn negotiations were called to break the stalemate that wrecked the sixth session of the Conference of Parties (COP-6), which was held in The Hague last November. The issue then was about the mechanisms countries could use to meet their targets for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in 2010, especially the role of forests in absorbing carbon from the atmosphere.

From the position that the developed countries have taken in the ongoing talks it looks like the differences among them on what are called ``carbons sinks'' have not narrowed, and, with just a day left before the ministerial segment of the talks end, it seems unlikely that any agreement will be reached before Sunday night. And while negotiators bristle at questions that they are waiting for instructions from the Heads of State gathered in Genoa for the G-8 talks, it does seem that without a political intervention at the highest level the Kyoto Protocol talks are headed once again for the freezer.

There are four broad issues on which differences have to be resolved: compliance, finance, mechanisms and ``land use, land- use change and forestry.'' The Kyoto Protocol, which was negotiated in 1997, laid down a target of a five per cent reduction in GHG by 38 developed countries by the year 2010. A plan of action drawn up at a meeting in Buenos Aires identified the broad mechanisms by which countries could reduce emissions. But the rules for compliance and the freedom countries have to choose mechanisms of their choice to lower emissions are proving the most difficult to find agreement on.

A variety of instruments, other than a lowering of emissions by the domestic economy, are available to countries to meet their 2010 targets. The one that has evoked the most controversy is how far countries can use afforestation as their route to reducing net emission of GHGs. Since vegetation absorbs carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere, some countries - mainly Canada, Japan and Australia - assert that the role of their forests in sequestering this gas should be set off against the discharge of GHGs by their economies. This is opposed by the European Union, which wants a very low limit on the credit that can be given to these sinks.

If there is no cap on the role of carbon sinks, the more that countries place under vegetative cover, the more they can avoid taking measures to improve energy efficiency in the transportation, industry and power generation - the three sectors that are responsible for most of the emission of CO2. However, the scientific community is itself of two opinions about the importance of forests in sequestering carbon. The Royal Society of the U.K. recently put out a report arguing that since the processes underlying the absorption of the gas by vegetation are not fully known, carbon sinks should not be a substitute for cuts in emissions. But some scientists, who are members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), yesterday put out on their own a statement recognising the ``transitional role'' of sinks in removing CO2 from the atmosphere. But the one thing that all scientists agree on is that few countries currently have the operational monitoring systems to measure the contribution of sinks to reducing net emissions.

The developing countries are not involved in this stand-off over sinks, but they have been involved in discussions on finance and technology transfer.

A fund of $1 billion as finance for technology transfer is being talked about. But with uncertainty even about whether this is an annual or total funding, this is far from being decided.

Signatories to the Kyoto Protocol have until 2002 to ratify the agreement. But a delay makes it more difficult to stabilise the build up of GHGs in the atmosphere. Yesterday, Dr. Bert Metz, a member of the IPCC, said here that since gas pumped into the atmosphere remains there for a decade, it was imperative to start acting immediately.

Dr. Metz's dire prediction was that even a delay of five years could take the GHG stabilisation in the atmosphere ``beyond reach.''

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Section  : International
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