16 July 2001

Ministers Gather in Bonn for Climate Change Summit

By Jim Fuller
Washington File Science Writer

Washington -- A U.S. delegation led by Under Secretary of State for Global Affairs Paula Dobriansky is attending climate change negotiations being held July 16 to 27 in Bonn to work with other nations on an effective and science-based response to the issue of global warming.

Ministers and diplomats from more than 180 countries are attending the meeting in an attempt to finalize regulations for implementing the Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement that aims to limit global emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming.

The protocol calls on industrialized nations to cut their heat-trapping emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, to an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 levels during the five-year period 2008 to 2012.

President Bush has said that he is opposed to the protocol because it exempts 80 percent of the world, including major population centers such as China and India, from compliance, and would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy.

In a speech delivered June 11, Bush said the protocol was "fatally flawed," but added that the U.N. process used to bring nations together to discuss a joint response to climate change was "an important one."

Bush said his administration is committed to a leadership role on climate change, and will work within the U.N. framework and with nations throughout the world to develop an effective and science-based response to the issue of global warming.

At a press conference June 14 following the U.S.-EU Summit in Goteborg, Sweden, Bush said he and European leaders did not agree on the Kyoto treaty, "but we do agree that climate change is a serious issue and we must work together. We agree that climate change requires a global response, and agree to intensify cooperation on science and technology."

Bush said his Cabinet-level Working Group on Climate Change has proposed spending additional resources to help build climate observation systems in developing countries. The working group also proposed a joint venture with the European Union, Japan and other countries to develop state-of-the-art climate models to better understand the causes and impacts of climate change.

In a White House statement released July 13, the president outlined specific climate change programs put forward during the last month. These include a request for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to invest more than $120 million in the next three years on climate modeling; an initiative calling for an international team of energy companies, including such major firms as BP-Amoco and Shell, to develop technologies for reducing the cost of capturing carbon dioxide from fossil fuel combustion plants; and a private-sector partnership in which the Department of Energy will work with The Nature Conservancy to study land use and forestry practices for storing carbon more effectively in Brazil and Belize.

While many countries have signed the Kyoto Protocol, most are waiting until its operational details are negotiated before deciding whether to ratify. No developed country has yet ratified the protocol.

Former President Clinton signed the protocol in 1998 but stated that he would not submit it to the U.S. Senate for ratification until it achieved "meaningful participation" by key developing countries.

A year earlier, the Senate voted 95-0 to adopt the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which said the United States should not join the agreement unless it mandated emissions targets for developing countries. The resolution also expressed the view that the protocol's legally-binding targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions would cause serious harm to the U.S. economy.

The climate change talks are a resumption of the sixth session of the Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The climate negotiations were suspended last November in The Hague after delegates were unable to reach agreement on terms and conditions of the Kyoto Protocol -- which was agreed to by negotiators in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, as an addition to the framework convention.

Key issues to be resolved at July's resumed talks include a package of financial support and technology transfer to help developing countries contribute to global action on climate change; rules for establishing an international emissions trading system; rules for counting emissions reductions from so-called carbon "sinks" such as forests; and a set of penalties for non-compliance to the protocol's emissions targets.

Bush has drawn criticism from allies abroad for his rejection of the climate treaty.

Swedish Environment Minister Kjell Larsson, representing the presidency of the European Union, said in a June 14 statement that abandoning the Kyoto Protocol "would mean postponing international action to combat climate change for years -- and we are already late. We cannot accept this."

EU ministers added that while they support continuous improvement in scientific knowledge and monitoring mechanisms, research should not become an excuse for delaying action. They said the scientific evidence for climate change detailed in the recent Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "is solid enough to warrant concrete and urgent action."

The IPCC, with a membership of 2,500 scientists from around the world, said in its report that the Earth's average surface temperature could increase by five degrees Celsius over the next century, with catastrophic results, including melted glaciers, flooded shorelines and droughts persisting for hundreds of years. The report blamed global warming, at least in part, on human produced greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, which are byproducts of fossil fuel burning.