New Delhi
9 October 2009
Except for Japan and Norway, the developed countries have by and large shied
away from announcing their individual greenhouse gases emission reduction targets.
Now attempts are being made to abandon the Kyoto Protocol altogether, putting the
forthcoming United Nations Climate Change Conference in jeopardy.
World leaders from 192 countries will gather in Copenhagen from 7 to 18 December to
chart out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which ends in 2012. By now, developed
country parties to the Kyoto Protocol should have announced their respective individual
and overall emission reduction targets for the second commitment period, commencing
in 2013. Also, those who had not joined the Kyoto Protocol -- such as the United States --
should have announced comparable commitments, as had been agreed upon in the Bali
Action Plan. But the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol have "gone in the reverse
direction," Shyam Saran, Prime Minister's Special Envoy for Climate Change, told a
news conference in Bangkok on Friday.
He was in the Thai capital for the penultimate round of discussions ahead of the
Copenhagen Conference. The last round of preparatory talks will be in held in Barcelona.
Mr Saran said that the developed countries led by the US have not shown the
willingness to announce deep and ambitious emission reduction targets.
"At this penultimate stage of our negotiations, new concepts and instruments have been
proposed, which taken together, would mean firstly, the setting aside of the Kyoto
Protocol altogether; secondly, the diminishing rather than enhancing of the level of
commitment as well as ambition with regard to mitigation; and thirdly, the rewriting of
key principles and provisions of the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change) itself [and] now there are inadmissible attempts to abandon the Protocol
altogether," Mr Saran said in his opening statement, a copy of which was made available
here.
"We hope that by the time we return to Barcelona in November, this unsatisfactory state
of affairs will change. A Copenhagen outcome without clarity on this important issue is
unlikely," Mr Saran added.
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