Sunita Narain: Life after Kyoto

DOWN TO EARTH

The change will do practically nothing to combat a problem that affects us all

All politicians and scientists (except George Bush and his group of climate-sceptic scientists) accept that climate change is now inevitable and that it will adversely, perhaps devastatingly, impact societies and economies.

Just how much damage, they do not know. How this devastation will occur, they are just beginning to find out. Just who will be worst affected, they can only hazard a guess. But they all agree that the poor in poor countries are most vulnerable.

The question is no longer whether global warming is for real or not. The question is what the world is going to do about it. The world began negotiating 15 years ago on ways to reduce emissions. It was agreed then, as now, that emissions are proportional to the wealth nations have accumulated. It was incumbent on the rich to curtail emissions.

This, it was agreed, would create the ecological and economic space for the developing South to grow. And space to pollute because carbon dioxide emissions are inextricable from economic growth, as yet.

After years of frenetic negotiations, the first agreement to limit emissions of the rich "" the Kyoto Protocol "" has recently come into effect. Under this agreement, the industrialised world, other than the renegades USA and Australia have agreed to cut their emissions by roughly 6 per cent over 1990 levels by 2008-2012. What is now brewing is: what is life after Kyoto?

The US will not be party to the protocol, which its government "" Republican or Democrat "" call fatally flawed. Flawed, they say, because it will cost them jobs. But also because it leaves out the big polluters, China and India.

Life after Kyoto, then, seems predictable. Europe, Japan and other protocol-compliant nations will argue that they have done their bit to avert climate change. That now their painful efforts to cut emissions, restructure their economies will come to nought if others do not join.

The protocol non-compliant will hide behind the villains whose energy needs are expanding so evidently. The next round then belongs to Asia where the two countries whose emissions are the bugbear of many will be under the scanner.

But before we can discuss Kyoto- plus, let us do a small reality check. The world now accepts that it would be prudent, indeed imperative, to ensure that the temperature rise does not exceed 2 degree celsius in the coming decades. (Interestingly, it was earlier agreed that 1 degree celsius is what the world should work on. That being unachievable, the target was moved conveniently).

Under this target, the world would need to keep the atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and equivalent greenhouse gases, well below 550 ppm. (Again, most scientists say this is too lax; the threshold is actually 450 ppm). In both scenarios the emission cuts are deep. They are also urgent: between 15 to 20 per cent reduction in global emissions in the more risky option within the next 50 years, at the very least.

Where do we stand? Let's take UK as an example of a compliant nation. Its prime minister believes combating climate change is at the top of his agenda. He quite rightly says that for global leadership, his country must "demonstrate first at home" what can be done to reduce emissions.

The government has set an ambitious 20 per cent domestic target, exceeding the protocol's target. Over the past 10 years or so, emissions have remained below the target, even as the economy has grown. Here was a model of how climate crisis could be won, painlessly.

But the bubble burst last month. Estimates released by the UK government say that emissions have increased over the past 2 years and that the country could exceed the Kyoto target and is seriously off track in meeting the domestic goal. What happened?

In 1999, when the Kyoto Protocol was being negotiated, the UK was already compliant with its target, with emissions 14.5 per cent below its 1990 levels. The reason: in the early 1990s, the country had switched to cheap North Sea gas and made efficiency gains in running power plants. It did not have to do much to meet its target except ensure that its climate gains were not lost.

But in recent years, even as the price of imported coal has fallen, the same climate-compliant government has done everything it can to protect jobs in its domestic sector.

As a result, 2004 emissions increased by 1.5 per cent over the previous year. The fact then is that the UK had to do little to meet its Kyoto target and even that did not happen. Deep cuts can be forgotten.

Climate experts calculate that given the combined effect of the US opting out and the concessions under the Kyoto Protocol, by 2012 "" a good 30 years after the world began discussing climate change "" the world may be able to achieve just 1 per cent reduction in the emissions of the industrialised North.

In other words, it will do practically nothing to combat a problem that it has created and that affects us all. Perhaps the next round of negotiations should keep this in mind.