By Jim Fuller

Scientists from the United States and other industrialized countries are helping the world's developing and transitioning nations find ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.

The U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, which has been ratified by more than 160 nations so far, requires all parties to prepare national inventories of their greenhouse gas emissions and to outline steps needed to mitigate the problem.

The continuing global accumulation of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide produced by the burning of fossil fuels, is thought by many scientists to be contributing to a rise in average global surface temperature. Warmer temperatures affect precipitation, and crop cycles, and they increase the range of animal pests, which can contribute to the spread of tropical diseases.

In their efforts to develop greenhouse gas emission inventories and evaluate options for controlling those emissions, developing nations and countries with economies in transition are receiving technical support and training from experts drawn from U.S. national laboratories, universities, private companies, and non-governmental organizations. The transitioning nations include the former Soviet republics and East European nations.

American experts work under the auspices of the U.S. Country Studies Program, which since 1993 has provided financial and technical support to 55 developing and transitioning countries for climate change studies. Under the Country Studies Program -- announced by President Clinton in 1992 -- U.S. researchers coordinate their activities in developing countries with experts from Canada, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, as well as organizations like the U.N. Environment Program and the World Bank.

Jayant Sathaye, senior scientist at the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, California, said the lab plays a lead role in helping developing countries assess their vulnerabilities to global warming and formulate climate change action plans. The action plans list specific measures to mitigate climate change and to cope with its impacts.

"We have organized training workshops, provided technical assistance to the participating nations, and organized workshops for reporting results," Sathaye said. "The results go into the preparation of each country's climate action plan. They are also used to prepare climate change projects that can be funded by various agencies, including the World Bank and private sector groups."

Since 1994, the Berkeley team has organized greenhouse gas mitigation workshops in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and Central Europe -- bringing together scientists from 35 nations. The work done at these workshops provided information used by negotiators working on a treaty to limit international greenhouse gas emissions at the Third Conference of Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change last December in Kyoto, Japan.

Sathaye, who attended the Kyoto conference, said he reported to the delegates on "the problems of implementing mitigation programs in the developing and transitioning countries, the costs of mitigation, the kinds of technology that should be transferred to reduce carbon emissions, and the conditions for successful transfer."

Sathaye said a new report released in August, funded by the U.S. Country Studies Program, examines the trend toward increasing greenhouse gas emissions in 14 developing and transitioning nations and what these countries can do to control the increases. The transitioning countries covered in the report are Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Kazakstan, Poland, Russia, Slovak Republic, and Ukraine. The developing countries covered are Mexico, Nepal, Nigeria, Sri Lanka, and Venezuela.

According to the report, baseline (business-as-usual) emissions of greenhouse gases in most of the transitioning countries begin to increase in the first decade of the next century, exceeding 1990 levels sometime during that period. The greenhouse gas emissions from the developing countries are expected to increase as their economies and populations grow.

For example, in Mexico's baseline scenario, carbon dioxide emissions roughly double in the period 1995 to 2010, growing faster than gross domestic product. In the case of Nigeria, the overall increase during the same period ranges from 30 percent in a low-growth scenario to 80 percent in a high-growth scenario.

Each nation's study focused on a different set of options for reducing their emissions. The choices included rehabilitating existing power plants, developing renewable energy sources, improving energy efficiency, and switching to low-carbon fuels.

In the Czech Republic, for example, it was found that increased use of energy-saving technologies would reduce baseline energy consumption in 2010 by 8 percent. The Russian study considered a large number of energy conservation measures whose implementation would reduce primary energy consumption by 23 percent.

Mexico's study focused on cogeneration in a number of industries and efficient lighting in homes and other buildings -- measures that would bring about a 13 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in 2005.

Many of the studies voiced the need for both foreign investment and international assistance on a larger scale to promote the transfer of technologies that offer greenhouse gas mitigation and other benefits. Helping to strengthen local capacity to evaluate and implement mitigation measures is also very important.

Another report released at the Kyoto Conference describes the greenhouse gas mitigation activities in 12 Asian nations. The overall project, funded primarily through the U.N. Development Program, the Asian Development Bank, and the government of Norway, included studies by more than 175 experts in the 12 countries.

The studies found that the largest greenhouse gas emissions among this group of Asian nations are from the People's Republic of China, India, Indonesia, and Republic of Korea. On a per person basis, however, the projected emissions of these countries even 23 years from now remain only a fraction of those of the industrial nations today, the report said.

The report's 2020 analysis of India's energy sector showed that carbon emissions can be reduced 5 percent -- at no additional cost compared to a scenario of continuing current trends -- using promising new industrial technologies, energy conservation measures, and more natural gas for electric power generation.

"The main thing we found with the Asian studies is that the developing countries are already doing a lot to reduce their emissions, but not for climate change reasons," Sathaye said. "They are improving their energy efficiencies and removing energy subsidies. But the studies show that they can do a lot more without jeopardizing their economic growth -- with anywhere from a 5 to 15 percent reduction in emissions possible without negative cost."

But Sathaye added that these countries need new capital and technology to achieve these reductions, providing a role for the United States and other donors to play in promoting the use of climate-friendly technologies.

----------

Jim Fuller writes on the environment and other global issues for the United States Information Agency.

Global Issues
USIA Electronic Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1, April 1998