Greenhouse-gas emissions by industrialised countries at new high: UNFCCC

Yahoo News 20 Nov 07

Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries have broken new records, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Tuesday ahead of a crucial forum on tackling global warming.

In 2005 -- the latest year for which the 40 industrialised countries which have signed and ratified the UNFCCC have reported data -- the total emissions of greenhouse gases by this group "rose to an all-time high," the UNFCCC said.

"The increases in emissions came from both the continued growth in highly industrialised countries and the revived economic growth in former East Bloc nations," it said. Transport accounted for the biggest growth in emissions of any sector.

The data released by the UNFCCC comes on the heels of a grim warning by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

At the weekend, the Nobel-winning IPCC issued a historic report that declared climate change was already visible and could wreak "abrupt or irreversible" damage if unchecked.

Publication of the figures also coincides with the runup to a UNFCCC meeting in Bali, Indonesia, running from December 3-14.

That conference is tasked with setting down a two-year strategy of negotiations leading to a new pact to deepen curbs on greenhouse gases beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire.

Under the Protocol, only industrialised countries that have signed and ratified it are required to make targeted cuts in their emissions. Developing countries do not have these pledges.

The United States -- the world's biggest carbon polluter in 2005 but widely tipped to be overtaken by China in 2007 -- remains outside the Kyoto Protocol.

It signed the pact in 1997 but has refused to ratify it, although it remains a member of Kyoto's parent treaty, the UNFCCC.

The new emissions data, as encapsulated in a press release by the UNFCCC, did not give the raw figures for the pollution reported by the industrialised economies (the so-called "Annex 1" countries) in 2005, or give a percentage comparison against 2004.

But a graph indicated that these emissions were higher than at any time since in the previous 14 years, due to a relentless rise in the West and a pickup in the old Soviet Bloc, whose command economies crashed in the early 1990s.

Here are the main points from the report:

-- By the end of 2005, the United States emitted 16.3 percent more greenhouse gases than in 1990. Australia, the other industrialised Kyoto holdout, was 25.6 percent above the 1990 benchmark.

-- Overall, Kyoto's Annex 1 countries are projected to achieve reductions of 10.8 percent by 2012 over 1990 levels. Under the Protocol, the Annex 1 group is committed to a five percent cut as a whole.

-- However, this 10.8-percent cut will only be achieved if the Annex 1 countries implement all the policies and measures they have promised and the collapse of carbon-spewing industries in Central and Eastern Europe is factored in. Green groups contest this latter calculation as an accountancy trick.

-- Within the European Union (EU), which is Kyoto's big champion, only four countries of the pre-enlargement EU-15 (Britain, France, Germany and Sweden) are on course for meeting their 2012 targets without additional measures. On the other hand, Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Italy and Spain were already as much as three times over their Kyoto ceiling in 2005.

The UNFCCC said there were some grounds for optimism.

It noted a surge of activity in 2006 in two Kyoto innovations -- the market in carbon emissions, launched by the EU, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in which rich countries get carbon "credits" if they offset pollution in poorer countries.

UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said a mix of tools was needed as countries shaped a post-2012 deal for tackling global warming.

"A future, ambitious UN climate-change regime needs to continue and expand the central elements of the Kyoto Protocol, whilst making use of other policy tools, such as carbon taxes and other effective policy packages," he said.