Proposals for a legally binding commitment on nations to stabilise emissions
of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, have been dropped from a new
draft of the Climate Change Convention, which is due to be signed at the
Earth Summit next month.
The chairman of negotiations, Jean Ripert, presented the watered-down
draft as the final 10 days of horse trading began in New York last Friday.
The elimination of all enforceable targets for carbon dioxide emissions
came at the insistence of the US – and despite last-minute mediation by
Britain’s environment secretary, Michael Howard. He flew to the US last
week in an effort to persuade US deputy secretary of state Robert Zoellick
to back a commitment by the European Community and Japan to stabilise emissions
at 1990 levels by the year 2000.
On his return to London, Howard announced that the British government
was ‘ready to commit the UK . . . provided other countries take similar
action’. That commitment must now be in doubt, and other European nations
may also waver.
Last week, European commissioners meeting in Brussels postponed a decision
on whether to impose a carbon tax, equivalent to $3 on a barrel of oil
until after the negotiations. The tax would be a key element in restraining
Europe’s emissions of carbon dioxide, but industrialists argued that it
would penalise them in competition with the US if the Bush administration
did not impose a similar tax.
The negotiations for a climate convention began after calls at a major
science conference in Toronto in 1988, which said it was ‘imperative’ to
aim for a cut in global emissions of 20 per cent by the year 2005.
Now, in an effort to secure any agreement at all, Ripert has proposed
wording for the convention, apparently agreed between Howard and Zoellick
last week, which imposes no firm requirements on nations. Instead, it contains
a commitment to prepare and report on national programmes ‘which will recognise
that the return to earlier levels of anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide
by the end of the decade would be an appropriate signal by developed countries
that longer-term emission trends have been modified’.
A separate paragraph in Ripert’s proposed text refers to the return
to 1990 levels as a ‘guideline’, and nations will report on progress at
The new wording came after a week in which the US appeared to signal
increased flexibility in its negotiating stance. The Bush administration
published a document, US Views on Global Climate Change, which suggests
that existing energy efficiency programmes on lighting, motors and air conditioning
are probably enough to ensure that US carbon dioxide emissions in 2000 will
be no higher than in 1990.
It remains to be seen whether the US will turn this forecast into a
commitment outside the terms of the convention. On his return from Washington,
Howard said he ‘urged all industrialised countries to make a commitment
to meet this (1990) target at the New York meeting’.
A host of other clauses have been removed from the slimmed-down draft
convention, apparently to satisfy objections by the US and oil-producing
nations. These include specific recognition that emissions of greenhouse
gases in developing countries will need to rise and that the wide gap in
per-capita emissions between nations will need to be narrowed and eventually
The work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may
be severely constrained when it is re-formed as a ‘subsidiary body for scientific
advice’ under the convention. In particular, according to an initial review
of Ripert’s draft by environmentalists in New York, it will not be asked
to review the impact of climate change on ecosystems, or to review aid projects
aimed at helping Third World nations to limit their emissions.