|
|
Improved climate for Kyoto agenda
|
The Hindu , Friday, December 16, 2005 |
Correspondent
: P. Manoj |
The 11th Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in Montreal has certainly brought about an improvement in the "atmospherics" relating to the international campaign to reduce the danger of global warming. The UNFCC's concrete programme, embodied in the Kyoto Protocol, had come under stress following the refusal of the U.S. (besides Australia) to accede to the Protocol and the U.S.' own parallel initiatives in recent months in forging "partnerships" with several countries on climate issues outside the treaty. The Montreal conference has had two major achievements. One was in firming up a plan to start talks on further commitments on targeted emission reductions beyond 2012 by those developed countries which have already undertaken such commitments in the first phase of the Protocol. The second was in trying to bring the U.S. and other dissident members of the UNFCC into the international climate change agenda by initiating what is called a "dialogue process", due to take place in the next two years. The conference has gone out of the way to accommodate U.S. concerns. First it has emphasised that the "dialogue on long-term cooperative action" is based on a recognition of "diversity of approaches to address climate change" and the "essential role of technology". Secondly, it has declared that the dialogue will "take the form of an open and non-binding exchange of views, information and ideas in support of enhanced implementation of the Convention and will not open any negotiations leading to new commitments." It is hoped that the non-binding dialogue process will make it easier for U.S. administration, present or future, to end its boycott of Kyoto.
Equally important would be a series of decisions, mostly of a technical and procedural nature, which are intended to take forward the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), one of the main instruments of cooperation between developed and developing countries under the Kyoto regime. The CDM, which is a market mechanism facilitating transfer of technology to developing countries for projects based on sustainable development, had been making very slow progress because of the complexity of procedures and vagueness in respect of criteria such as "baseline", "additionality", and afforestation. The institutional framework necessary at the level of individual nations, certified agencies for monitoring and approving CDM projects, and even carbon trading exchanges have all been put in place in the past few years. However, not even half a dozen projects had gone through the whole gamut of approval till now. Accelerated operation of the CDM will be valuable to the global community in forging the broadest possible political commitment to the issue of climate change. The conference's decision to examine the technological feasibility of `capturing' carbon and storing it underground as one method of mitigation of global warming is also likely to widen the support base of the UNFCC's agenda.
|
|
SOURCE
:
The Hindu, Friday, December 16, 2005 |
|
| | | |