Murray Ward: Getting the story straight

Climate change stories have been making headlines. In these pre-election times demonising the Kyoto Protocol has again become political sport for some. The public can easily become misinformed. Let's get the story straight.

The Kyoto Protocol is not about carbon taxes and forest credits. The protocol signed in 1997 is an international agreement to begin to manage the greenhouse gas emissions that are causing global climate change.

For each industrialised country it provided an emissions target and flexible means for meeting it. It allowed more than a decade before its provisions took effect and 15 years before compliance was assessed.

One provision provides credits for the carbon dioxide that new (since 1990) forests remove from the atmosphere. Countries can also trade emission units and credits, creating an international "carbon market".

Carbon taxes and managing forest credits are part of the domestic policies New Zealand has implemented to meet its commitments. Some groups don't like these policies, blame the Kyoto Protocol and call for New Zealand to withdraw from it as if it were the problem. Wrong problem, wrong solution.

The fact that China and India don't have targets is not a flaw of Kyoto

In 1995, at the beginning of negotiations, all countries agreed that developing countries would not have to increase their commitments in this "next step" of the United Nations Climate Convention. Industrialised countries were to go first. Their historical emissions are mostly responsible for the looming threat of climate change, in particular the burning of fossil fuels that was central to their industrialisation.

Disparities in per-capita CO2 emissions from energy, a key indicator of development status, were also considered. In 2000 they were 1 tonne per person in India, 2.8 tonnes per person in China, 8.5 in New Zealand, 9.5 in Britain, 9.7 in Japan, 17.3 in Australia, and 20.1 in the United States.

However, all 28 industrialised OECD countries that ratified Kyoto did so in the expectation that the next step must better engage the large developing countries. Notably, the upcoming meetings of the G8, which have climate change high on the agenda, also include China, India, Mexico, Brazil and South Africa.

Ratifying Kyoto is not about making money and never was

Instead of being the "and by the way" point at the end of the list of reasons when New Zealand ratified Kyoto, the "making money" rationale tended to grab the headlines as different groups sparred politically.

It is naive to believe addressing a problem that many world leaders have described as this century's greatest global threat necessarily must be costless, while at the same time ignoring the benefits of taking action. To say New Zealand should have ratified Kyoto only if there was no cost is vacuous.

New Zealand was the only industrialised country in the OECD that found itself in the position of possibly being a net seller of emissions units, even though it had a growing economy and growing emissions. This was because of the extensive planting of forests in the 1990s. All the others that ratified the protocol (the US and Australia being the exceptions) did so knowing that there would be some cost.

Can New Zealand stand being an international pariah on this issue, as the US and Australian Governments believe they're able to be? On so many other multilateral fronts, for example, international trade, the common wisdom is that New Zealand is too small to go it alone and needs to be part of the international club.

Recall that last month when New Zealand went through the shock of a possible foot-and-mouth scare we were reminded that agriculture is the "backbone of the economy".

Yet the same talking heads seem oblivious to, or simply dismiss, any harm to our reputation that would occur if New Zealand walked away from Kyoto. New Zealand is ranked No 4 in per-capita emissions among OECD countries when the emissions associated with the agriculture sector are included. We're not that "pure". This does not go unnoticed.

It now seems that New Zealand's emissions growth has surpassed earlier estimates and that some "since-1990" forests are not "new forests" as they weren't planted on pastoral land and so don't qualify as land-use change. The latest projections now suggest New Zealand won't have surplus units after all. We're just like 27 other industrialised OECD countries and need to up our game - not panic seven years early and throw in the towel claiming it's all somehow not fair.

Kyoto was never expected to solve the climate change problem

Some argue that not only is Kyoto going to be costly but experts agree it doesn't deal with climate change. This is misleading.

What experts do agree is that Kyoto is just a first necessary step. By establishing emission targets, having a measurement and compliance system and allowing emissions trading, Kyoto has enabled a new global financial market - the carbon market - and added the shoulders of the world's financial sector to the wheel. This market framework is the major success of Kyoto.

The carbon market will be a primary means to mobilise investment in energy efficiency and renewable and cleaner technology, which is necessary to substantially reduce global emission and allow the world to get on top of the climate change problem.

Because energy is central to the world's economy, the metaphor of turning a supertanker from a perilous course is often used. You don't expect that just a few minutes after you've turned the wheel you'll be pointing in a safe direction. So, too, with Kyoto and its first, modest commitments. It's all about setting the framework in motion.

* Murray Ward, formerly a senior manager and principal adviser to the Government, is now a global climate change consultant.