SUNS  4322 Thursday 12 November 1998

Buenos Aires, Nov 10 (IPS/Viviana Alonso) -- Four contrasting currents are vying for supremacy at the ongoing global conference on climate change here.

The Group of 77 (G-77) - which represents 132 developing nations - and China, the European Union, the United States and Australia are far from overcoming their differences at the start of the last week of the fourth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP 4).

The protocol has been so far ratified by two countries, the Caribbean island nation Antigua and Barbuda whose ratification announcement came during the meeting here, and the Indian Ocean island state of Fiji which was the first to do so.

However, there is still a long way to go for the Kyoto Protocol. Approved last December in the Japanese city of Kyoto, it will not become legally binding until it is ratified by 55 countries accounting for 55% of all industrial emissions. And the protocol is basically doomed unless it is ratified by the US and Russia, which accounted for more than 50% of all emissions in 1990.

The protocol sets targets for cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, caused by the burning of fossil fuels such as petroleum and coal.

The global warming caused by the emissions of ozone-depleting substances like carbon dioxide is causing natural disasters such as droughts, floods and hurricanes, while melting polar ice caps and
driving up the level of the oceans, leading to the disappearance of islands and making inroads on coastal regions.

According to the Kyoto Protocol, signed by 159 countries at the December meeting, the nations of the industrialised North must cut their emissions to 5.2% below the 1990 level, from 2008 to 2012.
Industrialised nations are responsible for 75% of global emissions.

The G-77 and China see the proposals put forth by the United States and Australia as nothing but an attempt to force developing nations to make commitments, which was not established by the Kyoto Protocol. But the USA and Australia maintain that the studies presented by the intergovernmental panel on climate change clearly show that actions by industrialised countries alone will not make it possible to meet the targets.

But a new study released in Washington by the National Environmental Trust has revealed that developing countries already are taking necessary action.

At the COP meeting in Buenos Aires, in the commission focusing on analysing technology transfer, the G-77 and China highlighted the importance of concrete agreements and implementation of mechanisms like the clean development fund, joint implementation and emissions trading, which they stress must be designed in such a way that they do not contribute to deepening the economic gap between countries.

The G-77 and China want the clean development fund to be discussed first. The United States, on the other hand, wants all three mechanisms to be dealt with simultaneously, and the EU would like discussions to continue on a general level, without yet delving into details.

UN representative to COP 4 Michael Williams said a deadline for  concluding negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol should be set this week, probably for the year 2001. "We hope to announce a plan of action for the next two or three years, which would enable the Kyoto Protocol to fully go into effect," he added.

Members of the US delegation said President Bill Clinton could sign the protocol by next March, but added that it might take several years for the treaty to be ratified by the Senate.

The report, released in Washington Tuesday by the National Environmental Trust, seeks to end the US Senate's opposition to negotiations on global warming and its refusal to ratify the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change.

The US and other industrialised countries are responsible for the bulk of the GHG emissions currently in the atmosphere but the Senate says that unless developing countries commit to curtail global warming pollution it will not approve the treaty. It argues that emissions from developing countries will surpass emissions from industrialised nations sometime next century.

"In reality, developing countries already are enrolled in the process to begin controlling global warming under the Rio Earth Summit in 1992," says Philip Clapp, president of the National Environmental Trust. "They already have begun remedial action with far fewer technological and capital advantages than the developed countries."

The 11-day meeting in Buenos Aires ends Friday when negotiators hope to produce details of a treaty that would mandate industrialised countries to reduce emissions of six greenhouse gases by an average of 6% from1990 levels, and to complete the reductions between 2008 and 2012.

Most scientists believe that these gases, resulting mainly from the burning of oil and gas, are the cause of global warming - which will continue to increase in the next century unless action is taken now.

The most recent projections by a international panel of experts predict that global temperatures could rise by an average of 6.3 degrees Fahrenheit. Such an increase would have major climatological and environmental effects, ranging from sharp increases in sea level to the northward spread of malaria into what are now temperate zones.

While the US complains about the lack of binding targets for developing nations, Washington officials are "sitting on their hands when it comes to taking action" to reduce the threat of global warming, says the National Environmental Trust.

"Meanwhile, developing countries, free of binding reductions targets, are taking proactive steps to cut emissions of carbon, methane, sulphur dioxide and other greenhouse gases now," says the report, 'Leadership and Equity: The United States, Developing Countries and Global Warming.'

Although many realize their role in global warming is small, developing countries also know the impacts will fall heaviest on them and their largely agricultural economies, the report says.

"More importantly, leaders in nations like China, India, Brazil, and South Africa also realize something else that many of their counterparts in the US have not: developing innovative clean industry can also mean healthy, progressive economic growth."

Overall, developing countries have taken more steps to reduce their subsidies of the fossil fuel industry than industrialised nations, the report says. From 1990-1996, total fossil fuel subsidies in the 14 developing countries that account for 25% of global industrial carbon emissions declines by 45 percent, from $60 billion to $33 billion.

During this same period, price supports in the industrialised nations declined only 20.5 percent, from $12.5 billion to $9.9 billion.

Because of China's reduction of fossil fuel subsidies, for example, the most populous nation emitted 155 million metric tons less in 1990 than it would have it had not reformed its energy pricing standards.

In 1996, China also began introducing more efficient technologies to its coal combustion industrial boilers. Such boilers are the largest single source of carbon dioxide pollution in the country,  producing about 715 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions.

With the goal of reducing global warming pollution, the Chinese government began a four-year $101 million plan to introduce advanced energy efficient boiler technology that will reduce approximately 181 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions annually. The bulk of the remaining funding for the project comes from a $33 million grant from the Global Environment Facility.

India also has cut fossil fuel subsidies significantly while launching specific programmes to encourage renewable energy industries, says the report.

Mexico too has implemented projects to encourage energy-efficiency. In 1994, the nation's national utility company initiated the High Efficiency Lighting Project which replace millions of energy-wasting incandescent light bulbs in two cities with more efficient compact fluorescent lighting. This reduced 118,000 tons of carbon dioxide, 3,000 tons of sulphur dioxide and 205 tons of nitrogen oxide emissions annually, according to the National Environmental Trust.

Brazil, says the report, is a world leader in the use of renewable energy with significant investments in biomass, and ethanol. "The country has a major ethanol-based automotive engine initiative, and has also begun to exploit its vast amounts of burning agricultural and forestry residue, called biomass to power gas turbines."

South Africa has initiated the 'Green Buildings for Africa' programme, which provides infrastructure and resources to improve the energy-efficiency in buildings around the country.

Argentina, an oil producer, has developed a Carbon Dioxide Reinjection Project that will capture escaping greenhouse gases and inject them back into oil wells. Without the project, much of the gas recovered by oil wells is normally vented into the atmosphere, emitting tons of carbon dioxide and methane.

With the help of the International Finance Corporation and Perez Companc, a major Argentine petroleum company, this project will reduce 148,000 tons of global warming pollution annually, says the report.