Little to celebrate on Kyoto Protocol's tenth birthday

Bali, Dec 11 - There was a three-tier cake. There were statements how the world must be saved from climate disaster. But there was little to celebrate at the tenth birthday of the Kyoto Protocol Tuesday as nearly 11,000 delegates from 187 countries squabbled over almost every word of the Bali roadmap draft.

Economic development by China and India has become the major bone of contention between industrialised and developing countries at the Bali summit, which is supposed to provide a roadmap on how to address climate change after 2012, when the first period of the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end.

Japan's Environment Minister Ichiro Kamoshita said climate change was his country's 'priority agenda', and hoped that 'industrialised and developing countries will expand' their fight against climate change.

Head of the International Energy Agency Nobuo Tanaka was more forthright when he said: 'It is not a time to celebrate. We have to move faster.'

Kimiki Hirata of the Kiko Network, an environmental NGO in Japan, said: 'The spirit of Kyoto is in danger.'

Stephen Campbell of Greenpeace Australia Pacific said: 'Japan, Australia, Canada and the US are turning this celebration into a funeral.'

Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Yvo de Boer had one bit of good news - the launch of the adaptation fund to help developing countries cope with the climate change that is already here.

The fund will become operational on Jan 1. It will be administered by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and will be overseen by a 16-member board of the UNFCCC that will meet twice a year. The money will come from a two percent levy on all clean development mechanism (CDM) projects.

The bureaucrats are still wrangling over whether carbon capture and storage (CCS) underground should be seen as a CDM project and financed. It is probable that there will be no agreement during this summit except to say that there should be 'further work on technical, legal and financial issue', according to de Boer.

The group discussing deforestation, which contributes to 20 percent of global warming, has decided to double the size of afforestation projects.

UN Secretary General Ban ki-Moon and over 155 government representatives including at least 130 ministers are going to be in the main plenary hall of the Bali International Convention Centre when the high-level segment of the summit opens Wednesday morning.

They will also have to do a lot of work in the meeting rooms. There is not even any agreement on whether negotiations for a post-2012 agreement should be through a 'comprehensive international framework' or 'cooperative action by enhancing the implementation of the convention'.

(c) Indo-Asian News Service

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