All eyes on emerging nations / CO2 emission cuts hinge on countries’ classification, cooperation
Written by Writer on Wednesday, November 12th, 2008
All eyes on emerging nations / CO2 emission cuts hinge on countries’ classification, cooperation
Hiroko Kono and Takeshi Kosaka / Yomiuri Shimbun Staff Writers
Negotiations for cutting greenhouse gas emissions are expected to move into high gear in Poland next month with the U.N.-sponsored 14th Conference of the Parties (COP14) to the world body’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The talks will center on forging a new framework to replace the Kyoto Protocol, which stipulates reduction targets for carbon dioxide and other global warming gases for the period from 2008 to 2012.
The negotiations for the post-Kyoto Protocol era will be critical in terms of managing such natural phenomena as storms, floods and droughts that are thought to be linked to global climate change.
The annual meeting will work on an accord for negotiation procedures with a view to signing a full emissions agreement one year later at COP15.
The following is the first installment of a two-part overview of the likely impact of a post-Kyoto Protocol framework on our lives, including energy consumption and production activities.
The Kyoto Protocol framework for combating global warming has a major drawback: The aggregate of CO2 emitted by the countries that are obliged to cut such emissions under the protocol accounts for no more than about 30 percent of the CO2 discharged throughout the world.
Two major reasons are cited for this.
First, the United States failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, while its ratification by Australia came only after a long delay, in December 2007.
Second, the amount of CO2 emitted by developing countries, which are not subject to obligatory reduction targets, has continued to rise sharply, far above projections made when the protocol was adopted at COP3 in 1997.
According to estimates by the U.S. Energy Department, global CO2 emissions in 2010 will rise 40.6 percent from the 1990 level.
A breakdown showed that total CO2 emissions by signatory countries, such as Japan and European nations, likely will fall to 31 percent from the 45 percent level registered in 1990. The projected 2010 figure for combined CO2 emissions by the United States and Australia is unchanged from 1990, at about 25 percent.
Developing countries’ emissions, however, will jump to 45 percent in 2010 from 30 percent in 1990, the department said.
The Kyoto Protocol classifies signatory countries into two categories–industrially advanced nations and developing nations.
Only industrialized countries are obliged to reduce CO2 emissions, as it is thought they should be held responsible for having discharged greenhouse gases since the Industrial Revolution.
At COP1, which took place in Berlin in 1995, it was reconfirmed that only industrialized nations should be subject to CO2 cutbacks, and the Kyoto Protocol was subsequently formulated based on this premise.
Among the developing countries, China, Brazil and Mexico–nations with so-called emerging economies–have been undergoing large-scale economic expansion for the first time.
Based on 2007 data, the U.N. International Energy Agency has projected that China will surpass the United States in terms of CO2 emissions in a few years’ time, becoming the world’s top greenhouse gas emitter in the process.
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New categories for nations
There are two key points concerning the effectiveness of a post-Kyoto Protocol framework: setting country-by-country reduction targets for greenhouse gas emissions and creating a mechanism to ensure emerging market nations such as China and India commit to the reductions.
The declaration released at the end of the Hokkaido Toyako summit of the Group of Eight industrialized nations in July contained a midterm target for the period from 2020 to 2030.
G-8 nations confirmed their resolve to continue reduction efforts in and after 2013 by pursuing “ambitious medium-term country-by-country targets.”
Regarding the distinction between industrialized and developing countries under the Kyoto Protocol, some international research institutions and experts have said only two categories for all the world’s countries is insufficient, and suggest this number be increased.
Under this idea, countries would be divided into an appropriate number of groups according to their economic development levels, with appropriate reduction goals set for each nation.
The criteria for classifying countries could include indexes such as per-capita gross domestic product, CO2 emissions per head and energy efficiency ratios, according to the experts.
Others insist that countries undergoing very rapid economic development, such as Singapore and South Korea, should be placed in the same category as industrially advanced nations.
Developing and emerging nations, for their part, more or less oppose reduction obligations.
When a country’s living standards–as gauged by public utilities such as electric power and water supplies in cities–rise, CO2 emissions are bound to increase sharply.
For this reason, India, for example, has strongly opposed having its economic growth constrained by emissions obligations, since its current per-head CO2 emission level is about one-eighteenth of that of the United States and one-ninth of Japan’s.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has gone on record as saying per-head greenhouse gas emissions, when viewed from a long-range perspective, should be equal throughout the world, irrespective of country.
Even if the world’s countries are successfully organized into newly defined groupings, another issue will remain unresolved: What should be done to ensure developing and emerging nations responsibly address the task of reducing emissions?
In this connection, a reduction method, known as a sectoral approach, has been drawing attention as a way of controlling emissions on a country-by-country basis.
The approach is designed to establish a set of globally valid emissions control targets for specific industrial fields–such as iron-making and aluminum-refining–which would be conducive to enhancing energy efficiency ratios in each sector, irrespective of national boundaries.
Hopes are rising that this approach might prove successful in encouraging emerging market nations to tackle emissions reductions.
Whether emerging and developing countries accept this sectoral approach will hinge largely on whether technological help and funding assistance from industrial countries runs smoothly.
One idea currently being discussed by experts is creating a mechanism under which emerging and developing nations would escape punitive measures in the event of falling short on reduction targets for specific industrial fields, but which would enable them to sell emissions credits to industrial countries if they succeed in cutting back on emissions in excess of the reduction goals.
Kono is a Yomiuri Shimbun senior editor.
(Nov. 12, 2008)
