Carbon pollution from industrialised countries rises again
PARIS (AFP) — Emissions of greenhouse gases by industrialised countries are surging anew after a long decline, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Tuesday ahead of a crucial forum on tackling global warming.
It blamed continued growth in Western economies and a revival of growth in former East Bloc nations, with pollution from transport the biggest culprit by sector.
"Industrialised countries' overall greenhouse-gas emissions rose to a near all-time high in 2005," UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said in a press conference telecast from Bonn.
"Greenhouse-gas emissions between 1990 and 2000 went down, but then between 2000 and 2005 they increased again, by 2.6 percent."
2005 is the latest year for which the 40 industrialised countries which have signed and ratified the UNFCCC have reported their emissions data, under their obligations to this treaty.
The data released on Tuesday comes on the heels of a grim warning by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
At the weekend, the Nobel-winning IPCC issued a historic report that declared climate change was already visible and could wreak "abrupt or irreversible" damage if unchecked.
Publication of the figures also coincides with the runup to a UNFCCC meeting in Bali, Indonesia, running from December 3-14.
That conference is tasked with setting down a two-year strategy of negotiations leading to a new pact to deepen curbs on greenhouse gases beyond 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol's current pledges expire.
Under the Protocol, only industrialised countries that have signed and ratified it are required to make targeted cuts in their emissions. Developing countries do not have these pledges.
The United States -- the world's biggest carbon polluter in 2005 but widely tipped to be overtaken by China in 2007 -- remains outside the Kyoto Protocol.
It signed the pact in 1997 but has refused to ratify it, although it remains a member of Kyoto's parent treaty, the UNFCCC.
De Boer clarified a UNFCCC press release that had said emissions by the convention's industrialised countries, the so-called "Annex 1" countries, had broken records in 2005. "It is at a near all-time high, not an all-time high," he said.
Here are the report's main points:
-- By the end of 2005, the United States emitted 16.3 percent more greenhouse gases than in 1990. Australia, the other industrialised Kyoto holdout, was 25.6 percent above the 1990 benchmark.
-- Emissions by Russia rose to 2.3 billion tonnes in 2005 from 2.09 billion in 2004.
-- Overall, Kyoto's Annex 1 countries are projected to achieve reductions of 10.8 percent by 2012 over 1990 levels. Under the Protocol, the Annex 1 group is committed to a five percent cut as a whole.
-- This 10.8-percent cut depends on the Annex 1 countries implementing all their promised policies and measures and factoring in the collapse of carbon-spewing industries in Central and Eastern Europe. Green groups brand this latter calculation an accountancy trick.
-- Within the European Union (EU), which is Kyoto's big champion, only four countries of the pre-enlargement EU-15 (Britain, France, Germany and Sweden) are on course for meeting their 2012 targets without additional measures. Portugal, Ireland, Austria, Italy and Spain were already as much as three times over their Kyoto ceiling in 2005.
De Boer pointed to a burst of activity in 2006 in two Kyoto innovations -- the market in carbon emissions, launched by the EU, and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), in which rich countries get carbon "credits" if they offset pollution in poorer countries.
"Emissions trends around the world and especially in industrialised countries are worrying," he said.
"But countries are beginning to put policies in place in order to meet their Kyoto targets, and our assessment is that those are robust policies and measures that will seriously take countries towards achieving their goals."
De Boer set a triple benchmark to judge Bali's success.
"If there is a decision to launch negotiations, if an agenda for negotiations is agreed and if an end-date (for completing negotiations) is set, then I would consider Bali to be a success," he said.
"Anything less than that would be either short of success or a failure."
