Despite Kyoto "success" emissions keep climbing

The world is on course to meet greenhouse gas emission targets set out under the Kyoto protocol, but only as a result of the collapse of eastern and central European economies in the 1990s.

That is the stark warning issued yesterday by the UN climate change secretariat, which released new figures showing that while emissions in the 40 industrialised countries signed up to Kyoto are down five per cent on 1990 levels emissions have shown an upward trend since the turn of the century.

It also found that when those countries that were impacted by severe economic down turns in the 1990s were stripped out emission levels for the other nations were around 10 per cent higher now than they were in 1990.

As a result only 16 industrialised countries are on target to meet their Kyoto obligations, including France, the UK, Greece and Hungary, while 20 countries are struggling to meet their targets, including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Spain.

The UN's top climate change official, Yvo de Boer, said that nations that miss their Kyoto target in 2012 will an extra 33 per cent added to whatever cut is agreed under a new treaty.

The data also revealed that emission increases appear to be accelerating, having climbed 2.3 per cent between 2000 and 2006 with the fastest rises experienced in those eastern European economies that have since recovered from the recessions that afflicted them during the 1990s.

"The biggest recent increase in emissions of industrialized countries has come from economies in transition, which have seen a rise of 7.4% in greenhouse gas emissions within the 2000 to 2006 time-frame," admitted De Boer, adding that the rapid increase in emissions from these countries underlined the urgency with which a successor to Kyoto must be agreed.

The new data was released just two weeks ahead of the next UN climate change meeting in Poznan, Poland, where it is hoped that delegates will deliver signifi cant progress towards agreeing a successor to Kyoto at the Copenhagen conference in December 2009.

However, that progress will have to be achieved without US president-elect Barack Obama who has declined an invitation from de Boer to attend the Poznan conference.

Speaking yesterday, De Boer said that neither Obama nor a delegation working on his behalf would attend.

De Boer had said previously that he hoped Obama would attend and green groups have been lobbying for the president-elect to make an appearance at the conference.

However, while signalling that he will make climate change a top priority for his administration, Obama's transition team have been at pains to make it clear they are not operating a dual presidency alongside George W Bush ahead of January's inauguration and apparently felt that to attend the Poznan conference would be to undermine the authority of the president.

In related news, the UN also released new accounting data, including emission quotas for those industrialised nations participating in the Kyoto commitment period running from 2008 to 2012.

"Emission quotas defined by the Kyoto Protocol are no longer simple numbers on paper," said De Boer. "They are part of real-time operation of the global carbon market. We see the carbon market working and this is an important message, not least for the Poznan meeting."