OSLO: Russia's greenhouse gas emissions rose by a tiny 0.3% in 2007 to the highest since 1990s economic downturn caused by the break-up of the Soviet Union, according to data submitted to the United Nations.
Emissions edged up to 2.192 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2007 from 2.185 billion in 2006, according to official figures filed to the UN Climate Change Secretariat in Bonn.
Russia is the world's number three emitter of greenhouse gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels, behind China and the United States.
The 2007 level was the highest since 1994 but still 33.94 percent below emissions in 1990, the benchmark in the U.N.'s Kyoto Protocol. Russia's emissions tumbled in the 1990s with the collapse of Soviet-era smokestack industries.
The 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union led to a fall in emissions that bottomed out at 1.98 billion tonnes in 1998, compared to 1990 emissions of 3.32 billion. Economic revival has since lifted emissions.
Russia's target under the Kyoto Protocol, which sets curbs on emissions for all industrialized countries except the United States, is to keep emissions below 1990 levels during the 2008-12 period. It can sell any surplus by staying under 1990.
More than 190 nations have agreed to negotiate by the end of 2009 a new UN climate pact to succeed Kyoto. Russia, Japan and Ukraine are among developed nations that have so far not laid out domestic goals beyond 2012.
Russia signed up last year for a "vision" by the Group of Eight industrialized nations to halve global emissions by 2050 to help avert the worst of warming such as rising seas, more floods, droughts and heatwaves.
