Poor Nations Need Incentives to Cut Emissions

New York Sept. 25th: Rich countries must cut their “unacceptably high” greenhouse gas emissions and provide incentives for poorer nations to follow suit, the United Nations secretary-general told a meeting of more than 80 heads of state and government on climate change on Monday. Ban Ki-moon said industrialised countries must show more leadership on the issue. “It has been 10 years since the Kyoto protocol was adopted. Yet most industrialised country emissions are still rising and their per capita emissions remain unacceptably high.” He said that poor countries, rather than being given the strict emissions reduction targets meted out to the developed world under the current Kyoto protocol, should be given “incentives to act without sacrificing economic growth or poverty eduction”.

Gordon Brown, prime minister, did not attend the meeting as it clashed with the Labour party conference. But Hilary Benn, secretary of state for the environment, used it to urge the US to reverse its opposition to binding targets to cut emissions. “[Tackling climate change] means all of us, including the largest economy in the world, the US, taking on binding emissions reduction targets. It is inconceivable that dangerous climate change can be avoided without this happening.” His words marked a change in tone for the UK in its approach towards the US on environmental issues. Tony Blair preferred to use his relationship with George W. Bush to press him privately to soften his stance on climate change.

Mr Bush was not at Monday’s meeting, but did attend a dinner that followed. He is holding a separate meeting on climate change with the world’s 16 biggest emitting countries later this week in Washington. The US is unlikely to commit to targets to reduce its emissions. Paula Dobriansky, undersecretary of state for democracy and global affairs, told the Financial Times the US supported a “long-term global goal” for reducing emissions, but that shorter-term goals should be set at a national level. The US has not proposed a specific target for emissions cuts. Ms Dobriansky said the White House would discuss in Washington later this week what such a goal should be.

Mr Ban called on Monday’s meeting, the biggest gathering of heads of state and government to talk about the problem, to agree the broad principles of tackling climate change ahead of a UN conference in Bali in December at which negotiations will begin on a successor to the Kyoto treaty, the main provisions of which expire in 2012. Although government representatives meet each year to discuss the Kyoto protocol, progress on agreeing to action on climate change has been slow. Many observers say part of the problem is that only environment ministers and their officials attend such meetings, rather than heads of government or more senior ministers. Mr Ban’s meeting was intended to break this deadlock by persuading heads of state and government of the need for international action in the hope that they would empower their environment ministers to make more progress in Bali.

Deal agreed to eliminate global warming gas

An environmental agreement was signed at the weekend by a host of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitters. The agreement was an extension to the Montreal Protocol, a landmark treaty signed 20 years ago that was intended to stem the destruction of the earth’s protective ozone layer by the use of certain chemicals. The agreement accelerated the phasing out of compounds known as HCFCs. These are used in refrigeration and other technologies as substitutes for other chemicals that destroy the ozone layer, but have the unfortunate side effect of warming the planet even more effectively than carbon dioxide. Phasing out HCFCs is much less controversial than cutting emissions of carbon dioxide because the technology to do so is readily available, whereas reducing carbon requires fundamental changes to the way we produce energy. HCFCs, though very potent greenhouse gases, make up only a small proportion of overall greenhouse gas emissions.
By Fiona Harvey Copyright The Financial Times Ltd. 2007
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