Associated Press: The treaty that will eventually replace the Kyoto Protocol on climate change could be a potpourri of legal obligations, nonbinding commitments and aid arrangements for the developing world, but each nation should choose its own course, the U.N.’s top climate official said this summer.
At the outset of a season of climate negotiations, Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said countries such as the United States are mistaken if they dismiss the Kyoto process on the grounds it is forcing them into unwanted legal commitments.
“Countries themselves are in the best position to decide how they can achieve a target to which they commit,” he told The Associated Press from his headquarters in Bonn, Germany. “You should not seek to impose legally binding commitments on countries.”
At the same time, he said, it was up to the industrialised nations to take the lead in fighting global warming, and that binding commitments give a strong signal to energy investors on where to put their money.
De Boer’s comments appeared aimed at minimizing differences with the United States, which opted out of binding international agreements, but which is now trying to seize the initiative in shaping the next phase of world climate policy.
The U.S. position has angered the European Union, which has adopted increasingly higher targets and imposed tough regulations on its member nations beyond their Kyoto commitments.
President Bush called a conference in September in Washington of the world’s 15 biggest polluters, including India, China and several other countries not bound by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012. De Boer will head the U.N. delegation.
That meeting took place three days after a broader meeting on climate change summoned by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Sept. 24 in New York. Both the Washington and New York talks were geared toward a major U.N. meeting in Bali, Indonesia, in December to discuss a successor agreement to Kyoto.
The Kyoto agreement requires 35 industrial nations to cut their global-warming emissions 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
It also devised a carbon trading market and set up a system for nations to offset part of their obligations by sponsoring emission-reduction projects in developing countries. De Boer said 700 such projects - such as financing hydroelectric or wind power projects - are in the pipeline.
De Boer said an important element in the post-Kyoto climate regime will be how countries can gain credit by helping the developing world.
“It makes sense to get the biggest bang for your bucks, to identify the most cost-effective emissions reduction options around the world. The atmosphere doesn’t care where you reduce emissions as long as you reduce emissions,” says Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change.
Date: 2007-10-25