Climate chief warns on carbon emissions
The industrial world is hurling more carbon into the atmosphere than ever before and governments have just a few years to avert calamitous climate change, the UN climate secretariat said today.
Though overall emissions are rising, UN projections show that the 36 countries which pledged to cut carbon emissions by 5% under the Kyoto Protocol will easily meet their targets by 2012 and will emit nearly 11% less than they did in 1990.
Taken together, the industrialised nations showed a reduction in greenhouse gases from 1990 through the next decade, but that trend reversed in 2000, the UN-verified data showed.
Emissions have been growing since then, reaching a near-record in 2005 and continuing to move upward.
Yvo de Boer, the general secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which is based in Bonn, Germany, said: “Emissions are going up in a worrying way.”
He said the growth was driven by continued expansion in the West and by the reviving economies of former Soviet-block countries, where emissions dropped sharply during the 1990s after the collapse of heavy carbon-intensive industries.
“We have 10 to 15 years to turn the trend of global emissions from up to down if we are to avoid many of the catastrophic consequences” predicted by scientists, Mr de Boer said.
Emissions by the US, which rejected the Kyoto accord, grew by more than 16% from 1990 to 2005, and are projected to rise to 26% by 2012.
The report was issued three days after a Nobel-winning UN panel of scientists, in its most comprehensive report to date, warned that unrestrained emissions of greenhouse gases, primarily from factories and vehicles, will lead to a radically altered world.
They predicted that widespread floods, droughts, fierce storms, and rising sea levels will affect hundreds of millions of lives and drive one-third to two-thirds of plant and animal species to extinction.
Next month, about 180 countries will hold a critical meeting in Bali, Indonesia, to begin talks on a new regime to control emissions after the Kyoto commitments expire in 2012.
The US renounced its initial acceptance of Kyoto in 2001, calling it unmbalanced. Mr de Boer said it was critical to involve the Americans in the next phase of emissions controls.
“It makes no sense not to engage the world’s number one emitter,” he said.
The figures released today relate only to industrial countries, but Mr de Boer said China, India and other countries with large developing economies are also adopting strategies to curb emissions.
He cited the creation of a carbon trading market as a major achievement of the Kyoto accord. Countries which fail to meet their emissions targets can buy carbon credits from countries which surpassed their goals.
Last year, this market was worth €20.3bn, and it is likely to double this year, Mr de Boer said.
Countries also gained credits by sponsoring climate-friendly projects in the developing world. He said 840 projects have been registered in 49 countries, and another 1,800 projects are in the pipeline.
