At Bali climate change meeting, a hard look at Kyoto

Old climate change standards offer lessons as diplomats consider a successor pact.

from the December 10, 2007 edition

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Still, the rest of the group is expected to do well enough that when these former Soviet republics are thrown into the mix, industrial countries could end up trimming their collective emissions by up to 11 percent below 1990 levels, de Boer says.

To some of the agreement's critics, the projected results are based on coincidental economic circumstances from when they were determined in 1990. For instance, they point to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who changed her country's fossil-fuel base from coal to natural gas. And following the collapse of the Berlin Wall, Germany reunited with East Germany, which was undergoing a wrenching economic change, dramatically lowering its emissions almost overnight.

Picking 1990 as the base year "is extremely fortunate for the Kyoto Protocol because factors having nothing to do with the protocol are responsible for aggregate emissions trends," notes Roger Pielke Jr., a science-policy specialist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Kyoto countries likely would have met their targets even without a protocol in place, he argues.

Whether or not the protocol succeeds under its own modest terms, however, nearly everyone agrees that what comes next will look far different. Just how different will become apparent as negotiators here lay out their framework for talks between now and 2009.

An initial draft of that framework emerged Friday after the first week of talks and it contains elements "that touch all the right bases," says David Doniger, policy director for the National Resources Defense Council's Climate Center.

For instance, its preamble explicitly acknowledges that all industrial countries party to the Framework Convention on Climate Change – which would include the US – need to reduce emissions some 25 to 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020. And it calls for quantified national emissions objectives by all developed countries under the convention. These would be harmonized with emissions goals for the countries currently covered under the Kyoto Protocol. It also aims to include several key topics for negotiation that developing countries are seeking.

But, Mr. Doniger cautions, the fate of the road map could hinge on a mere handful of possible changes. Thus, over the next few days, negotiators will be parsing phrases and angling to insert or delete language in ways that could lead to a consensus among ministers, which is required to approve the negotiating road map.

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