Yahoo News 17 Nov 08;
BONN (AFP) – Two weeks before the start of key talks on global warming, the UN's climate-change watchdog issued figures here Monday that reflected poor headway by industrialised countries towards curbing dangerous carbon pollution.
Greenhouse-gas emissions by 40 so-called Annex 1 countries under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change were almost unchanged in 2006, falling by a mere 0.1 percent from 2005, the UNFCCC said.
From 2000 to 2006, though, emissions increased by 2.3 percent as activity revived in the former Soviet bloc economies.
The annual inventory was published ahead of negotiations running in Poznan, Poland, from December 1-12 on commitments beyond 2012, when pledges under the treaty's Kyoto Protocol expire.
"The figures clearly underscore the urgency for the UN negotiating process to make good progress in Poznan and move forward quickly in designing a new agreement to respond to the challenge of climate change," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said in a press release.
The next climate pact -- a treaty of daunting complexity -- is scheduled to wrap up in December 2009 in Copenhagen.
Optimism for the Poznan talks has been dimmed by the global financial crisis, crimping governments' room for concession.
"It's fortunate that we haven't a deal to be done in Poznan," De Boer noted at a press conference.
The UNFCCC, the offshoot of the 1992 Rio Summit, has 192 members, but only industrialised parties, not developing states, are required to provide data to the greenhouse-gas inventory.
When forestry, land use and conversion of land are taken into account, emissions by the "Annex 1" countries rose by 1.0 percent from 2000-2006 and by 0.4 percent from 2005-2006, UNFCCC said.
From the benchmark year of 1990 to 2006, emissions from Annex 1 countries fell by 4.7 percent, but this was mainly thanks to the collapse of carbon-spewing industries in the former Soviet bloc.
Emissions from these so-called transition economies have fallen by 37.6 percent since 1990.
Since 2000, though, they have risen by 7.4 percent.
The UNFCCC inventory shows that emissions by Spain in 2006 were 50.6 percent above 1990 levels and Portugal's were 40 percent higher. Australia was 28 percent above the 1990 benchmark, and the United States was 14 percent.
A total of 188 parties to the UNFCCC are also ratifiers of the Kyoto Protocol.
Thirty-nine of them, including the European Union, are industrialised parties that have signed up to targeted emissions curbs by 2012.
The big holdout is the United States, which abandoned the pact in 2001 although it remains a member of the UNFCCC.
Industrialised parties to Kyoto have promised an average cut of five percent over 1990 levels.
As of 2006, emissions from the Kyoto countries which reported their figures were around 17 percent below the benchmark, but also grew after 2000.
These figures "cannot be used as an indication of compliance," as they fail to take into account so-called flexibility mechanisms under Kyoto, the UNFCCC report said.
Under these provisions, countries can use three market mechanisms to offset their emissions by the treaty deadline.
Scientists have sounded ever louder warnings about greenhouse gases, saying they trap heat from the Sun instead of letting it rebound into space. As a result, rising temperatures are inflicting perceptible changes to ice and snow and could badly damage the climate system in coming decades.
There is no expert consensus of what is considered a safe level, but many climatologists have pleaded for emissions to peak within the next 10 to a dozen years and then fall afterwards to peg warming to two degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Carbon dioxide, emitted especially by fossil fuels, accounted for 82.5 percent of all emissions in 2006, as compared with 79.6 percent in 1990, the new figures showed.
