By Derek Abma
Some leading voices on climate science have suggested that the Kyoto Protocol be put to pasture as international representatives meet in Durban, South Africa, to discuss the environment.
In a recent issue of the science journal Nature, both an editorial and separate commentary article suggested that clinging to hopes of a renewal of that agreement, or another pact with binding emissions targets, does more harm than good in achieving meaningful dialogue on how to fight climate change.
Both articles said there is almost no chance that the world’s two biggest economies, the United States and China, will agree to binding requirements for reducing carbon emissions. This means other leading economies, including Canada, Japan and Russia, also are unlikely to legally commit to emissions reductions because of fears it will put them at an economic disadvantage.
The commentary written by Elliot Diringer, executive vice-president of the U.S.-based Center for Climate and Energy Solutions (formerly the Pew Center on Global Climate Change), said that in environmental negotiations since Kyoto, “a binding-or-nothing mentality has held sway ever since, and the result often has been nothing.”
He said the Kyoto Protocol has been “more of an impediment than a means to genuine progress” in efforts to achieve a global strategy to fight climate change caused by human activity.
The original Kyoto agreement was negotiated in 1997. The United States later withdrew, China was not subject to binding emissions targets, and Canada signed on to reduce emissions 6%t below 1990 levels by 2012 but had emission levels 17% above that figure in 2009.
The Nature editorial said when the agreement was negotiated in the 1990s, the world was more clearly divided into “rich and poor” countries. However, so-called developing countries, including China and India, have seen unexpectedly strong economic growth since then and now make up 58 per cent of global emissions.
“Against this backdrop, it is no surprise that countries such as Japan, Canada and Russia adamantly refuse to assume new binding targets unless the other major economies at present outside Kyoto’s reach — most notably, the United States and China — do so as well,” wrote Diringer. “And for now, the odds of that happening are nil.”
Diringer makes the case that the greatest hope currently lies in “small steps” that would include targets that are not legally binding and an acknowledgment for the need for concrete targets, to which countries are committed.
He said for many countries, reducing emissions is actually an economically favourable option, and he pointed out unilateral action that has been taken in some European countries and even in China.
“If the principal drivers of action are domestic, do international commitments matter? Yes,” Diringer wrote.
Though he added: “But we need to be more realistic about how and when we get there.”
John Bennett, executive director of environmental group Sierra Club Canada, insisted that binding targets are necessary for an effective international strategy on climate change.
He added that Canada would benefit, as would the rest of the world, by renewing or improving upon its Kyoto commitments, regardless of what countries such as the U.S. and China do.
“We start to modernize our economy [by committing to reduce emissions],” Bennett said. “We’re always saying we have to improve our productivity, we have to improve out innovation. A binding target is a way for the government to encourage productivity because you’re producing more with less energy, and you’re going to need new kinds of technology and new kinds of knowledge in order to achieve that.”
He added that Canada commands a great deal of respect internationally and taking a leadership position on environmental action would encourage other countries to do the same.