Saudi Arabia, United States do least for climate: study

Yahoo News 7 Dec 07;

[wildnews note: the study puts Singapore among the 56 countries that are responsible for 90% of energy-related CO2 emissions. And Singapore is ranked 11th from the bottom.]

Saudi Arabia and the United States do the least to protect the climate while Sweden does the most, according to a report by a German environmental group published on Friday.

Germanwatch's Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) evaluates and compares the climate protection performance of the 56 countries that are responsible for 90 percent of energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.

Saudi Arabia retained its last place finish from last year in the rankings, but the United States fell two places to second bottom.

The report had sharp criticism for Australia, which slid to 54th in the list from 47th last year.

Germanwatch said Australia had "more and more deviated from the necessary reduction targets as stated in the UN Framework for Convention on Climate Change" under former prime minister John Howard's 11 years in charge.

It expressed hope for an improvement under his successor Kevin Rudd, who ratified the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gases in one of his first acts in office this week.

As last year, Sweden is the country doing most to protect the climate, followed by Germany which on Wednesday unveiled a package of laws and regulations to help it meet its target of a 40 percent cut in greenhouse gases by 2020.

Germany displaced Britain, which slipped to seventh. Iceland ranked third.

However, Germanwatch said that even high-ranking countries could not sit back and relax.

"The results illustrate that even if all countries engaged in the same manner, current efforts would still be insufficient to prevent dangerous climate change."

The report was published as 190 nations meet on the Indonesian island of Bali to create a framework for a post-2012 treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol.

Indonesia's climate change policies rated among world`s 15 best
Antara 8 Dec 07;

Nusa Dua, Bali (ANTARA News) - Indonesia`s climate-change policies on national scale are rated among the 15 best among the world`s 56 biggest carbon emitters in the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), a foreign non-governmental organization (NGO) said.

For its local climate-change policies, Indonesia is ranked one of the six best among 56 countries studied, while for its internnational policies, it is among the 22 best, said Jan Burck of Germanwatch here Friday.

He said the ratings Indonesia had obtained did not necessarily mean that Indonesia`s national and international policies were already very good. "These scores are inidicators that Indonesia`s policies are already better than some other countries` policies but it must still continue to improve its policies in the future," Burck said.

To determine the indice of the 56 countries which produce 90 percent of the world`s volume of carbon emissions, Germanwatch had received reports from NGO-affiliated experts from all over the world.

For information on Indonesia, Germanwatch had relied on the results of studies by two local NGOs the names of which Burck refused to disclose.

"Every year, Germanwatch asks the NGOs for studies and assessments and uses the telephone to communicate with them on things needing clarification," he said.

Burcks said Indonesia was now among the 15 best scorers in the relative CCPI.

"The ranking can rise or drop depending on whether or not other countries have done something better than Indonesia," he said.

Another determinant factor was the fact that Indonesia`s emission potentials are not as big as the developed countries. In addition, the constant improvement in Indonesia`s policies led it to ascend 28 grades above its 43rd place last year. Its CCPI in 2006 was in 36th place.

In 2007, Indonesia`s CCPI score was 57.6 making it one of the developing countries considered to have begun to tackle the climate change phenomenon "seriously." (*)

Links

Climate Change Performance Index 2008
A comparison of the 56 top CO2 emitting nations
on the GermanWatch website