Climate talks: Japan's pro-US stance draws flak
The Japanese protest they are simply trying to kickstart negotiations here at the annual UN climate meeting, viewed as the most critical such session in years.
By Agencies |
BALI: In an opening gambit, Japan has proposed that the Bali climate conference pursue a broad “least common denominator” approach to negotiating new controls on global-warming gases. Environmentalists couldn’t think less of it. The proposal says nothing about making future targets for emission reductions legally binding — the principle underlying the current Kyoto Protocol. “Is Japan scrapping the Kyoto Protocol on its 10th birthday?” asked Japanese environmentalist Kyoko Kawasaka.
A Canadian colleague spoke of a “plot” by Japan and the US to block a new Kyoto-style global agreement. For their part, the Japanese protest they’re simply trying to kickstart negotiations here at the annual UN climate meeting, viewed as the most critical such session in years.
The exchange offers an early view of what promises to be a contentious two weeks on this lush, relaxed resort island, where many hope the more than 180 assembled nations will decide to launch two years of serious negotiations on a future regime to head off dangerous climate change.
The 175-nation Kyoto Protocol of 1997 requires 36 industrialised nations to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” by an average 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
The US is the only industrial nation to have rejected Kyoto. President George W Bush’s administration objects that such mandatory cutbacks would damage the US economy, and that they should have been imposed on such poorer but fast-developing nations as China and India.
Bush favours allowing each country to decide on voluntary, “bottom-up” reductions. The pro-Kyoto parties, on the other hand, led by the European Union, seek a “Bali roadmap” of talks that, by 2009, will produce a new deal requiring still-deeper reductions by richer nations after Kyoto expires in five years.
A Canadian colleague spoke of a “plot” by Japan and the US to block a new Kyoto-style global agreement. For their part, the Japanese protest they’re simply trying to kickstart negotiations here at the annual UN climate meeting, viewed as the most critical such session in years.
The exchange offers an early view of what promises to be a contentious two weeks on this lush, relaxed resort island, where many hope the more than 180 assembled nations will decide to launch two years of serious negotiations on a future regime to head off dangerous climate change.
The 175-nation Kyoto Protocol of 1997 requires 36 industrialised nations to reduce their emissions of heat-trapping “greenhouse gases” by an average 5% below 1990 levels by 2012.
The US is the only industrial nation to have rejected Kyoto. President George W Bush’s administration objects that such mandatory cutbacks would damage the US economy, and that they should have been imposed on such poorer but fast-developing nations as China and India.
Bush favours allowing each country to decide on voluntary, “bottom-up” reductions. The pro-Kyoto parties, on the other hand, led by the European Union, seek a “Bali roadmap” of talks that, by 2009, will produce a new deal requiring still-deeper reductions by richer nations after Kyoto expires in five years.
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