Richard Ingham and Shaun Tandon Yahoo News 10 Dec 07;
On the eve of the Kyoto Protocol's 10th anniversary, campaigners voiced joy here Monday as the Nobel peace award nailed climate change to the top of the political agenda. But there was also dismay over setbacks towards a new pact to tackle global warming as new disputes emerged.
The 2007 Nobel ceremonies in Oslo, Norway were telecast live to the December 3-14 Bali meeting on climate change, capping a year that has made the greenhouse-gas crisis an inescapable priority for political leaders everywhere.
In an air-conditioned room, more than 100 delegates on the Indonesian island watched the ceremony on big screens, some taking pictures or sipping wine offered by the Norwegian delegation.
The crowd broke into applause as Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, head of UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), arrived for their joint award.
"I'm so very happy at this recognition and what it brings to this issue," said beaming French delegate Amy Dahan.
On Tuesday, the UN conference was to take the celebratory tone a notch higher with a birthday cake in honour of the Kyoto Protocol, the pact on curbing greenhouse gases that was inked in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997.
Yet there were also reminders of the problems that have dogged Kyoto throughout its life, as new disputes emerged over how to strengthen its pollution-cutting action beyond 2012.
From Wednesday, environment ministers from nearly 190 countries will strive to agree a blueprint for negotiations that will both step up curbs on greenhouse gases and channel help to poor countries in the line of the climate juggernaut.
It will essentially be a three-way game of poker.
In one corner are the European Union (EU) and other industrialised supporters of Kyoto.
In another, there is the United States, which remains outside Kyoto, objecting to the cost of meeting its mandatory emissions curbs and arguing that emerging giant economies, led by China, should also sign up to binding limits.
And in the third is the bloc of developing countries, which oppose being dragged into Kyoto's binding emissions-cutting pledges.
They say unbridled burning of fossil fuels by rich countries have caused today's warming, so it is up to these privileged economies to slash their emissions first.
Efforts to craft a compromise for ministers that will satisfy all three parties have been a stumbling, stuttering affair.
Gore on Monday lashed out at the United States and China, the world's number one and number two emitters, which together account for roughly half of all of the planetary emissions of greenhouse gases.
"Both countries should stop using the other's behaviour as an excuse for stalemate and instead develop an agenda for mutual survival in a shared global environment," Gore said in an advance copy of his acceptance speech.
A fresh setback, meanwhile, emerged over crafting a Bali compromise text.
A previous commitment by Kyoto's industrialised countries, which sketched the "ambition" of reducing their carbon emissions by between 25 and 40 percent by 2020 compared with 1990 levels, was weeded out in a new version of the text.
Similar text was under threat in a second document, this time in a group that would include the United States. Its chief delegate, Harlan Watson, told reporters that such figures would "pre-empt" negotiations.
Green activists said that these changes, if endorsed by ministers, could have a crippling effect on negotiations likely to unfold over the next two years with the goal of framing a post-2012 treaty.
At a stroke, it would ease pressure on the two big emitters to make concessions of their own, and it would undercut expert opinion that a major early cut in greenhouse gases is needed within the next decade or so.
"It would be incomprehensible, on the day that the IPCC and Gore get the peace prize, that a bunch of backroom negotiators in Bali strip out figures based on the best scientific evidence," said WWF's Hans Verolme.
"It's going to be very hard to keep these numbers in the text. There's going to be a fight about it," predicted Greenpeace's John Coequyt.
Thelma Krug, a negotiator with the Brazilian delegation, said it was vital for industrial countries to make a clear and meaningful offer.
"If they are not showing the willingness, matters start to became very complicated. If nobody shows the willingness to deal with the reduction of carbon emissions to a manageable level, then what are we doing here?" she said to AFP.
In its latest assessment on the global-warming question, the IPCC predicted that by 2100 global average surface temperatures could rise by between 1.1 C and 6.4 C (1.98 and 11.52 F) compared to 1980-99 levels.
More powerful storms, droughts, floods and rising sea levels are among the risks that will escalate in coming decades, lead to hunger and homelessness for millions.
In a new report issued on Monday, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) bluntly warned that in some regions, climate change could fuel tensions, unrest and even war.
Northern and southern Africa, the Sahel and South Asia are among "regional hotspots" most at risk.
