EU,
Environmentalists Alarmed With Russia's Indecision On Kyoto
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After
hearing Russian President Vladimir Putin say yesterday
during the opening of the World Climate Change Conference
in Moscow that the country has not yet decided if
it will ratify the Kyoto Protocol, environmental groups
and European Union representatives said they were
alarmed with the country's lack of commitment, the
London Guardian reports.
"This
is an extraordinary display of bad faith by President
Putin that will sour his relations with the EU,"
said a member of the European Parliament's climate-change
delegation, Chris Davies.
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"For
months Russia has insisted that it will eventually ratify
the Kyoto Protocol. It must be hoped that this announcement
signals a last-minute attempt at brinkmanship to extract
further financial concessions out of the EU rather than
heralding the collapse of the world's only agreement to
curb global warming," he added.
Putin
said yesterday that the Russian government is closely studying
the issue, but that more research on climate change was
needed. "Modern science needs to determine the actual
degree of danger posed by global climate change," he
said. "Scientists should also help answer another crucial
question about the limits of the impact of industry on the
climate system."
According
to the Guardian, Putin's statement was likely to cause delight
in Washington, since the United States does not support
the protocol.
For
the climate-change convention to come into force, countries
accounting for at least 55 percent of 1990 gas emissions
must ratify the protocol. Russian ratification would achieve
those numbers (Walsh/Brown, London Guardian, Sept. 30).
Also
speaking at the conference was World Meteorological Organization
Secretary General G.O.P. Obasi, who said that scientific
data shows with certainty that global surface temperatures
and sea levels are rising and that the world's glaciers
are melting.
Obasi
also said that research shows that pollution from human
activities is changing the composition of the atmosphere,
and that extreme weather and climatic events have been causing
forest fires, floods and droughts around the world.
He
stressed the importance of the climate-change convention
to address the problem, as well as more incentive at the
scientific level, saying "commitment and cooperation
of all nations are essential in consolidating and building
a comprehensive, coordinated, integrated and sustainable
global observing system for climate" (WMO release,
Sept. 29).
In
a message to the participants of the conference, U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Annan warned that if actions are not taken,
"by the end of the century, as a result of ever-increasing
emissions of greenhouse gases, our planet may look very
different: with many small islands gone, the Arctic Ocean
free of ice for many months of the year, agricultural regions
dramatically altered, and our ecological life-support system
under stress as never before" (U.N. release, Sept.
29).
Copyright, UN Wire, Year 2003 . http://www.unwire.org/UNWire/
