John Blakeley: Doubtful future unless big players join the team

Opinion

New Zealand, with most other developed countries, is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol. This requires an upper limit on our man-made greenhouse gas emissions during the five-year first commitment period from January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2012.

The future of this treaty is in doubt because of the failure of the recent climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico to make any progress in negotiating a legally binding agreement.

Such an agreement will be necessary to succeed the present treaty when its first commitment period expires.

Consideration of the future of the Kyoto agreement has been deferred until the next annual conference is held in Durban, South Africa in December. At that time the present agreement will have only one more year to run.

This would not leave time for a new treaty to be negotiated and ratified by all the countries involved before the expiry of the present Kyoto agreement.

Carbon offset markets worth US$20 billion ($26 billion) depend on Kyoto emissions caps to drive developed countries to pay for cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries.

This is a cheaper alternative to cutting their own emissions. So failure to reach a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol could jeopardise the whole international carbon trading process, and the emissions trading schemes now being initiated in many developed countries including New Zealand.

Nearly every developed country apart from the US is bound by commitments to the Kyoto agreement. But the three largest non-European signatories - Japan, Russia and Canada - have indicated they are not interested in joining a second commitment period for this treaty.

This is because it only covers a minority of global emissions, and in particular, does not include the US and China, which between them, account for more than 40 per cent of man-made global greenhouse gas emissions.

It seems that Japan, Russia and Canada will not be interested in purchasing carbon emissions offsets, and that from 2013 onwards, the only countries with binding agreements to limit their greenhouse gas emissions will be those countries within the European Union.

Climate Change Minister, Nick Smith, has said New Zealand does support a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol. However, New Zealand had also argued at Cancun that a simple extension of the present Kyoto agreement, covering only 27 per cent of global emissions, would not work.

So any attempt to reach a legally binding agreement which does not include the US and China as the world's two largest emitting countries is almost certain to fail. And neither the US or China is interested in signing the present Kyoto Protocol, or in signing any other legally binding agreement as a successor.

The US is considering reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by between 14 and 17 per cent below 2005 levels (around 3 to 4 per cent below 1990 levels), but this would be dependent on Congressional approval.

This highlights a problem barely mentioned at the Cancun conference which is the Republican takeover early this year of the US House of Representatives, essentially ruling out any new legally binding pact requiring the US to cap or reduce its man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

So it seems the present climate change negotiations may be heading towards an impasse in regard to finding a successor agreement to the present Kyoto Protocol.

If this successor agreement cannot be found by the time of the Durban conference in December, what will happen to carbon offset schemes and emissions trading schemes around the world after the present Kyoto agreement expires at the end of 2012?

Although China has recently overtaken the US as the single largest national emitter, the US remains a key player in trying to solve this major global problem. This is both because of its very high emissions per person, and also its present proportion of around 20 per cent of the world's total man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

But unless the US can change the present political situation with its Congress, it is likely to remain a core part of the problem rather than helping find a solution to limiting global greenhouse gas emissions.

- John Blakeley is a programme leader in the department of civil engineering at Unitec Institute of Technology, Auckland.