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International concern over the environmental impacts of the world's uncontrolled use of coal, oil and gas has grown in the second half of the twentieth century. The damage caused to plants, animals and buildings by acid rain and the effects on human health of poor air quality and smog have led to a raft of national, regional and international agreements aimed at controlling these problems by cutting emissions of the gases which cause them.

In the mid-1980s, awareness began to increase of yet another problem caused by fossil fuels - climate change, also known as global warming or the greenhouse effect. The warming gases (known as greenhouse gases) given off when fossil fuels are burnt are increasing in the atmosphere, leading to rises in global temperature and sea levels. The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2). Concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today are already 30 per cent higher than the levels which existed before the Industrial Revolution.

Growing scientific urgency

The emergence of a scientific consensus on the causes and impacts of climate change has driven the development of policies aimed at tackling the problem both nationally and internationally. In late 1988, two United Nations agencies, the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organisation, set up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This brought together scientific experts from all over the world to assess the science of climate change, its impacts and the strategies needed to respond to it.

The IPCC's first report, known as the First Assessment Report, was agreed in August 1990, despite heavy pressure to block its publication from oil producing countries and industry. Some of its key conclusions are:

“We are certain ... emissions resulting from human activities are substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gases... These increases will enhance the greenhouse effect, resulting on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface ...” “we predict ... a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century... greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years.”

In addition, the report found that immediate 60 to 80 per cent cuts in emissions of carbon dioxide would be needed to stabilise carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere at today’s levels.

An international climate change treaty agreed in record time

The strength of the IPCC's findings led to widespread agreement among countries that the only way to deal effectively with the issue of climate change was by means of an international treaty, or convention. In November 1990, the United Nations General Assembly agreed to establish a process aimed at negotiating and adopting an international climate convention to be ready for countries to sign at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992.

The negotiating process involved nearly all the world's nations, as well as observers from business and industry and environmental organisations such as Greenpeace. While many countries wished to see legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions included in the convention, the USA refused to agree to this, claiming that there were still scientific uncertainties over the need to take action, and citing unacceptable economic consequences of cutting energy consumption. The USA is the world's biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, and it was essential that it signed the convention. The more progressive countries were forced to compromise their positions in order to get the USA on board, and as a result, the final treaty, known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), includes only a legally weak and ambiguously worded 'aim' requiring the industrialised countries (listed in Annex I of the Convention) to return their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

Annex I of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change

Australia

Austria

Belarus*

Belgium

Bulgaria*

Canada

Croatia*

Czech Republic*

Denmark

European Community

Estonia*

Finland

France

Germany

Greece

Hungary*

Iceland

Ireland

Italy

Japan

Latvia*

Liechtenstein

Lithuania*

Luxembourg

Monaco

Netherlands

New Zealand

Norway

Poland*

Portugal

Romania*

Russian Federation*

Slovakia*

Slovenia*

Spain

Sweden

Switzerland

Turkey

Ukraine*

United Kingdom of

Great Britain

and Northern Ireland

USA

*Countries that are undergoing the process of transition to a market economy and with Annex I as amended at COP3 (Decision 4/CP.3)

Lack of action by the industrialised world

The Convention required the first meeting of the Parties to the Convention (the first Conference of the Parties, known as COP1) to review the adequacy of the commitment to return emissions to1990 levels by 2000. In the lead up to COP1 it became clear that few OECD countries (basically the industrialised Western nations) were making sufficient efforts and most were failing to achieve the commitment. Projections of future emissions provided by the industrialised countries in fact showed that carbon dioxide emissions in most of the OECD countries were continuing to rise sharply as a result of increasing fossil fuel use.

It also became clear that despite this failure and the growing scientific consensus on the need to make real cuts in emissions, there was little political support among the Annex I countries for legally binding emission reductions to be agreed at COP1. In an attempt to increase the pressure for action, the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), whose members include low lying island nations which are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise, proposed that the Annex I Parties should reduce their carbon dioxide emissions by 20 per cent by the year 2005. This target was supported by Greenpeace and other environmental groups, but was resisted by most of the OECD countries.

A new negotiating process set up

In the end, although the Parties at COP1, held in Berlin in March/April 1995, agreed that the Convention's greenhouse gas commitments for the Annex I countries were inadequate, they failed to agree new concrete emission targets. Instead, in a document known as 'the Berlin Mandate', they agreed merely to set up a new negotiating process whose main purpose was to strengthen the commitments by agreeing greenhouse gas limitation and reduction targets to be included in a legal instrument, with the aim of adopting the instrument at the third Conference of the Parties.

The Berlin Mandate also stated that the negotiating process would not introduce any new commitments for the developing countries. This was because, as the Berlin Mandate said, it is the developed countries which are responsible for the largest share of historical and current global emissions and emissions per person are still relatively low in the developing countries. The Mandate also recognised that the share of global emissions from developing countries will need to grow to meet their social and development needs.

The negotiations on the Berlin Mandate were carried out by a committee which included most of the world's nations. The process also included hundreds of observers from business and industry and the environmental and development movements. It was this committee which negotiated what became known as the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC.

Strong scientific consensus

At the end of 1995, the IPCC agreed its Second Assessment Report. This involved over 2,500 scientists and experts, and its historic conclusions included the statement that:

"The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate -that is we are already seeing the first signs of climate change".

A wide range of impacts of climate change on human society and on natural ecosystems were found for just a doubling of carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere above pre-industrial levels. The IPCC predicts that this doubling could occur as early as 2030 if measures to reduce emissions are not implemented. Some of the Second Assessment Report's findings were:

“Most systems are sensitive to climate change. Natural ecological systems, socio-economic systems, and human health are all sensitive to both the magnitude and the rate of climate change.”

“...Potentially serious changes have been identified, including an increase in some regions in the incidence of extreme high-temperature events, floods and droughts, with resultant consequences for fires, pest outbreaks, and ecosystem composition, structure and functioning, including primary productivity"

Specifically on human health the IPCC found that:

"Climate change is likely to have wide ranging and mostly adverse effect on human health, with significant loss of life."

Forests are projected to suffer significant damage:

“a substantial fraction (a global average of one-third, varying by region from one-seventh to two-thirds) of the existing forested area of the world will undergo major changes” and “...entire forest types may disappear..”

Some of the world's poorest developing countries may suffer the most from the impacts of climate change:

“There may be increased risk of hunger and famine in some locations; many of the world’s poorest people - particularly those living in subtropical and tropical areas and dependent on isolated agricultural systems in semi-arid and arid regions - are most at risk of increased hunger. Many of these at risk populations are found in sub Saharan Africa; south, east, and Southeast Asia; and tropical areas of Latin America, as well as some Pacific island nations..”

It is not surprising therefore that the IPCC found that early action is required and that emission reductions are possible:

“Failure to adopt policies as early as possible to encourage efficient replacement investments at the end of the economic life of plant and equipment (i.e., at the point of capital stock turnover) impose an economic cost to society.”

“Significant reductions in net greenhouse gas emissions are technically possible and can be economically feasible”.

Negotiating the Kyoto Protocol

The strength of the IPCC's findings and the widespread scientific consensus on climate change were major forces during the negotiations which culminated in the Kyoto Protocol. The acceptance of the science by countries meant that there were instead two main issues upon which debate focused during the negotiations. The first was the impacts of action by industrialised countries to reduce their emissions and the second was the issue of developing country action to limit the growth in their emissions.

Industrialised country action needed now

The biggest source of emissions in the developed world is the burning of fossil fuels to provide energy for domestic use, transport and industry. Action to cut emissions therefore requires energy to be used more efficiently and a switch to renewable energy systems such as solar and wind. Countries which are highly dependent on fossil fuels and those such as the OPEC countries, which produce fossil fuels, as well as powerful interests from the fossil fuel and industrial sectors, lobbied intensively throughout the negotiations to prevent agreement on emission reductions, stressing the adverse impacts such reductions would have on national economies and global economic growth.

However, other countries stressed the need for early action, pointing to the economic costs of delay, as well as the unacceptable consequences of inaction in terms of climate change impacts.

Industrialised countries still the major culprits

Although the Berlin Mandate specifically stated that there should be no new commitments for the non-Annex I developing countries, some OECD countries, particularly the USA, as well as the US fossil fuel lobby, argued that action by the developed countries would be overwhelmed by projected increases in emissions in the developing countries, and that the Protocol must therefore introduce, at a minimum, a timeframe for the introduction of emission commitments for developing countries.

Emissions in many large developing countries are undoubtedly growing rapidly, although from very low baselines. However, International Energy Agency figures show that in the 1990s two thirds of global emissions of carbon dioxide came from the developed countries, and project that these countries will still be the source of over half the world's emissions unless they take action to reduce their emissions.

It is the developed countries whose emissions since the Industrial Revolution have caused the climate change problem we are currently facing. It is therefore the responsibility of the developed countries to take action first. Many developing countries are already taking substantial action to reduce their emissions growth, and some have done much more to reduce their emissions than many industrialised nations. Developing countries should not be expected to take on board commitments to limit their emission growth until the industrialised countries have met their responsibilities.

The Kyoto Protocol to the Climate Convention - a new legal instrument

The new protocol, known officially as the Kyoto Protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, was adopted in Kyoto, Japan on 11 December 1997 at the third Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC.

The Kyoto Protocol is significant because it introduces, for the first time, legally binding greenhouse gas emission commitments for the developed countries (this includes most of the developed countries listed in Annex I of the UNFCCC). The commitments agreed to should, according to the Protocol, lead to an overall global reduction of at least five per cent in 1990 levels of greenhouse gases by 2008-2012.

However, the Kyoto Protocol is a far from simple document. Not only the commitments themselves but also the mechanisms by which the developed country Parties may achieve them are extremely complex. Although countries recognise the need to cut global emissions of carbon dioxide and the other greenhouse gases to prevent dangerous global warming, many developed countries, aided by intensive public pressure from the fossil fuel industry, refused during the negotiations to agree to the kinds of cuts in their domestic greenhouse gas emissions which the science demands. The result was commitments in the Protocol which fall far short of what is really needed to protect the earth from major climatic changes.

Apart from the inadequate greenhouse gas emissions commitments, the Kyoto Protocol contains a number of provisions whose details were not resolved at the final negotiating session in Kyoto. These include the so-called flexibility mechanisms (emissions trading, joint implementation and the Clean Development Mechanism) and the use of sinks by developed country Parties to achieve their emission commitments. Within these provisions is the potential for a number of sizeable 'loopholes', elements which could sanction emission levels far above what was intended in Kyoto, and which have the potential to undermine and even overwhelm the Protocol's global reduction target of at least five per cent.

Parties to the Convention are now entering a new round of negotiations aimed at resolving the outstanding issues in the Kyoto Protocol, and there is a real danger that decisions will be taken which will permanently establish loopholes in the Protocol.

These loopholes may be difficult, if not impossible, to close in the future, and could allow developed countries to avoid domestic action to reduce their emissions, and global emissions to increase.

WHY ARE THE EMISSION COMMITMENTS INADEQUATE?

What are the major sources of greenhouse gases?

The most important greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide (CO2), and its biggest source by far is the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) for energy. Six billion tonnes of carbon are released as carbon dioxide every year from this source. Burning fossil fuels also gives off two other greenhouse gases: methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide are also given off as a result of deforestation, removal of grassland cover and agricultural practices. Deforestation is responsible for about 1.6 billion tonnes of carbon released as CO2 per year. Methane is also emitted during the management and disposal of waste.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) and halons are chemical gases which cause both ozone depletion and global warming. They are being phased out or controlled under the Montreal Protocol and so are not included in the UNFCCC or its Kyoto Protocol. The three industrial global warming gases controlled under the Kyoto Protocol are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).

Although molecule for molecule, methane, nitrous oxide, HFCs, PFCs and SF6 are more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, they are not as significant as CO2 because they are emitted in much smaller quantities. The use of fossil fuels is by far the most important source of greenhouse gases. In the period 1990-1995, fossil fuel use was responsible for nearly 60 per cent of total greenhouse gas emissions.

How deep do emission reductions need to be?

Ecological limits

The ultimate objective of the Kyoto Protocol is the same as that of its parent convention, the UNFCCC. This is found in Article 2 of the Convention and states that greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere must be stabilised at a level "that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system", and that this level should be achieved "within a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner".

But what does achieving the ultimate objective actually require? Clearly, Parties must agree on a set of ecological limits or targets which would safeguard ecosystems, food production and economic development as required in Article 2 of the Convention, and then agree on emissions reductions which will achieve them. However, ecological limits were barely discussed during the Protocol negotiations and there is currently no international process for finalising and agreeing a definition.

Species and ecosystems are highly sensitive to temperature increase and sea level rise, both in terms of the magnitude of such changes and the rate at which they happen. The temperature and sea level rise sensitivities of many species and ecosystems are well known, and have been used by scientists to calculate their ecological limits. Using these, scientists have been able to establish global ecological targets beyond which species and ecosystems are unable to adapt naturally and which would result in serious impacts.

In 1990, the United Nations Advisory Group on Greenhouse Gases (AGGG) published environmental targets which stated that in order to minimise the risk to species, ecosystems and food production, temperature rise should be restricted to a maximum of 1oC above the pre-industrial level, the rate of temperature rise should be a maximum of 0.1oC per decade and the rate of sea level rise should be a maximum of 20mm per decade. Since then, other scientific research has been published which supports the AGGG's targets.

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