UN talks adopt Kyoto rules on global warming

By Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

MONTREAL (Reuters) – Countries meeting at U.N.
environmental conference adopted on Wednesday the rules for
limiting emissions of greenhouse gases under the U.N.’s Kyoto
Protocol, but Saudi Arabia held up a key section on policing
the accord.

“This is an historic step,” Canadian Environment Minister
Stephane Dion, host of the November 28-December 9 talks by
about 190 nations, said of the decision by government
officials.

“The Kyoto Protocol is now fully operational,” he said.
Kyoto obliges about 40 rich nations to curb their emissions of
heat-trapping gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in
factories, cars and power plants, by 2012.

The voluminous rules include details of accounting for
greenhouse gases, how to encourage investments in developing
countries, rules for trade in greenhouse gas emissions and
reams of other operational details.

The Montreal meeting agreed to all but one of the 22
sections of the rules but Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil
exporter, said it wanted rules on compliance to be approved by
an amendment to be ratified by all nations, a process that
could take years.

Saudi delegates argue that an amendment would give the deal
more legal teeth. But environmentalists accused Riyadh of
trying to bog down Kyoto, driven by dislike of a scheme likely
to force a shift away from oil toward cleaner energies.

Jennifer Morgan, climate policy expert at the WWF
environmental group, said Saudi Arabia was an ally of the
United States, which is not a member of Kyoto, in opposing any
discussion of what to do after 2012.

“They’re trying to stop any discussion of what to do after
2012,” she said. Developing nations have no targets for
emissions under Kyoto’s first period lasting until 2012.

LEGAL FORCE

Kyoto is a tiny step toward braking a warming trend that
most scientists say could cause more floods, storms, drive up
sea levels, spread diseases and push thousands of species to
extinction.

The Kyoto rule book was originally agreed at a conference
in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2001 but needed formal approval at
the Montreal meeting to gain legal force.

Delegates predicted they would overcome the Saudi
objections by the end of the conference. Environment ministers
from around the world will attend the final three days.

“I’m absolutely confident that we’ll have agreements on the
compliance system,” said Richard Kinley, acting head of the
secretariat of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change
which oversees Kyoto.

And Kyoto backers celebrated despite the Saudi objections.

“This gives the Kyoto Protocol the most innovative rule
book we have in multilateral environmental agreements,” said
Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission
delegation.

Kyoto obliges about 40 developed nations to cut their
emissions by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12. The
United States pulled out in 2001, saying that it would cost
U.S. jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations.

Under the compliance system, any country that overshoots
its targets will have to make up the shortfall, and an extra 30
percent penalty, in the next period. It can also lose a right
for trading emissions of greenhouse gases.