Russia set to ratify Kyoto Protocol

1.00pm

By Michael McCarthy and Mary Dejevsky in London and Andrew Osborn in Moscow


It's not enough, but it's a start. Politicians and environmentalists around the world cheered yesterday when, after a long period of vacillation, Russia finally moved to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, the international treaty on countering climate change.

The decision by President Vladimir Putin's cabinet to approve ratification means that the landmark UN agreement, which aims at cutting the greenhouse gases causing global warming, and which was gravely weakened by George W Bush's decision to withdraw the US from it in 2001, is at last likely to enter into legal force some time next year.

It has been an agonising wait for anyone concerned with the climate change threat. The withdrawal of the US, the world's biggest greenhouse gas emitter, meant that, under the treaty's terms, ratification by Russia, the next biggest, was essential for it not to fall by the wayside.

For more than a year the Russians have hesitated, weighing up the political and economic pros and cons of ratification, with their every pronouncement on Kyoto examined by environmentalists with the same sort of minute scrutiny Kremlinologists used to apply to political reports in Pravda in the days of the Soviet Union.

The vociferous opposition to the treaty, of President Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov, who thinks it will constrain Russia's economic development, has been contrasted with other more favourable opinions.

Yesterday, however, the Russians finally came off the fence when the Putin cabinet agreed on ratification, and sent their decision to the Duma, the Russian parliament, to be confirmed.

As the Duma is largely controlled by Mr Putin's United Russia party, it is thought very likely that this will happen, and that the Russians will ratify some time early in the New Year.

This will pass the threshold for the treaty to enter into force - it needs to be ratified by 55 countries, representing at least 55 per cent of the industrialised world's emissions of greenhouse gases in 1990, to do so - and 90 days later Kyoto will become a legal reality.

Good news for the world? Certainly. Yet it is increasingly recognised that the cuts Kyoto prescribes in greenhouse gases - principally carbon dioxide (CO2) - difficult though they may have been to agree in the first place, will themselves merely scratch the surface of the climate change problem, and will only have the tiniest effect on the anticipated catastrophic world temperature rise in the coming century.

UN scientific predictions suggest this may be up to six degrees centigrade as a global average, and even more in regions of high latitude, such as the British Isles, with consequences that are likely to include widespread agricultural failure, rising sea levels, and increasingly extreme weather events such as violent rainstorms and hurricanes.

Even if the US had not withdrawn and all the Kyoto cuts were implemented as originally envisaged in 1997 when the treaty was negotiated in the eponymous Japanese city, they would only reduce the anticipated rise by about 0.05 degrees, and climate scientists insist that to be of any use, cuts must be at least ten times deeper.

Tony Blair has recently led the way in calling for massive cuts in CO2 emission of 60 per cent by 2050, and has promised to make new climate change initiatives the policy centre piece of Britain's chairmanship next year of the G8 group of rich nations.

However, had Kyoto failed, the whole international consensus on acting to tackle climate change, painstakingly put together by thousands of negotiators from more than 150 countries in hundreds of meeting since the World Climate Conference in 1990, would have fallen apart with it, and yesterday real delight was expressed around the world that the treaty was back on track.

Margaret Beckett, the British Environment Secretary, hailed the Russian announcement and said she hoped to see an early decision by the Duma.

"Russian ratification is a vital step forwards for global efforts to tackle climate change," she said.

"I am delighted by President Putin's decision to send the protocol to the Duma for ratification, and we look forward to a swift decision. It is the right thing for Russia, for Europe, and for the global community, and it is a timely boost for Britain's plans for international dialogue on climate change in 2005."

Greenpeace welcomed the Russian move which, it said, would leave United States President George Bush facing international isolation over his opposition to the protocol.

"As the Earth is battered by increasing storms, floods and droughts, President Putin has brought us to a pivotal point in human history today," said international climate campaigner, Steve Sawyer.

"The Bush administration is out in the cold and the rest of the world's governments can move forward as one to start tackling climate change, the greatest threat to civilisation the world has ever seen."

The Russian decision does indeed leave the United States, the world's biggest polluter, looking isolated on the international stage as an environmental sinner, but this is unlikely to cut any ice with the US Senate and Congress, which are implacably opposed to the treaty, not least because in its current form it only calls for cuts from the industrialised countries.

Major developing nations such as China and India, which are themselves major emitters of CO2, have not yet been brought into the cuts process. However, Tony Blair has recognised that this is an essential next step if the process is to move forward, and has pledged to begin talks with the Chinese and Indians.

The Russian cabinet's decision to approve Kyoto ratification followed a long tussle at the highest levels of the Russian government, in which international political considerations finally prevailed over practical misgivings.

The Kremlin realised that it could extract a valuable prize in exchange for ratification; EU approval for Russia's entry into the World Trade Organisation and the promise of a visa-free regime with the 25-nation bloc.

After the appalling way in which the Beslan school siege was handled and vocal western criticism of moves to scrap democratic elections for regional governors in favour of Kremlin appointees, Russia also realised that it needed all the good publicity it could get.

- INDEPENDENT