Accord Speeds Up Timetable for 'Action Plan' on Environment
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 15, 1998
BUENOS AIRES, NOV. 14 --
Diplomats, clinching a deal in the final hours of tumultuous, marathon climate talks here, agreed today to put their governments on a fast track for deciding how to meet ambitious goals for slashing emissions from fossil-fuel combustion.
The accord, gaveled through at sunrise after nearly two days of non-stop negotiations, represented the first concrete steps toward implementing the global warming treaty approved last December in Kyoto, Japan. In what diplomats described as a crucial first test for the pact, negotiators from more than 160 countries agreed on deadlines and an "action plan" that they say will guide efforts to fight global warming.
The deal was hailed by U.S. and European ministers as evidence of momentum in implementing the controversial climate treaty. But diplomats were more encouraged by apparent progress in resolving one of the thorniest issues blocking progress in climate talks -- whether developing countries should take on more responsibility for reducing their emissions.
"This conference was marked by a clear shift in the terms of the debate," said Stuart Eizenstat, the deputy secretary of state who led the U.S. delegation to the United Nations talks here. "Our talks here were infused with a promising new spirit of engagement that is helping to bridge the divide between developed and developing nations."
Today's agreement was reached after intense bargaining and diplomacy-by-exhaustion that nearly mirrored the December conference, which produced the Kyoto accord. The deal teetered on collapse a number of times as a block of developing countries -- led by Saudi Arabia and other oil-rich states -- sought to block proposals for setting firm deadlines for resolving disputes about compliance with the treaty. The Saudis changed their stance after other developing countries broke ranks and sided with industrial countries.
Negotiators ultimately agreed to set rules for enforcing the Kyoto pact by late 2000, including tough measures to guard against cheating and penalties for countries that fail to comply. They also vowed to decide within two years guidelines for market-based programs to make it cheaper and easier for countries to cut pollution.
The Kyoto accord binds industrialized countries to sharp reductions in greenhouse gases over the next 13 years. But the pact leaves many issues unresolved, including when and how developing countries will take on obligations for curbing their emissions. The pact faces an uphill fight in the Senate, in part because of objections to the exemptions for large developing countries such as China, which will soon surpass the United States as the world's leading emitter of greenhouse gases.
The accord was formally signed on Thursday by the Clinton administration, but U.S. officials insist they will not submit the pact for the Senate ratification needed for it to become law until improvements are made.
The rift among developing countries emerged earlier in the week when Argentina and Kazakhstan announced they would voluntarily adopt restrictions on the growth of their emissions. Since then, more than a dozen other developing nations have expressed interest in taking on a variety of commitments for curbing pollution at home.
Some saw the movement as the diplomatic equivalent of last year's pledge by British Petroleum to reduce its own greenhouse gas emissions -- an announcement that fragmented industrial opposition to a climate treaty and led to subsequent declarations by more than a dozen other major corporations.
"The decisions taken in Buenos Aires show that governments have begun to roll up their sleeves and get down to the serious business of reducing greenhouse gas emissions," said Fred Krupp, director of the the New York-based Environmental Defense Fund.
Europe and the United States put off until next year their biggest dispute, whether to set limits on the amount of trading in "emissions" credits and other market mechanisms that would allow rich countries to have higher emissions at home in return for investing in "clean" technology abroad.
Europeans want strict limits on trading to force countries to undertake most of their emissions cuts domestically.
The modest gains on substantive issues in Buenos Aires left partisans on both sides of the climate debate unimpressed. European "greens" complained that the ministers had done little to help the environment.
"This meeting has been a trade fair, wrangling over how to keep the fossil fuel industry alive and burning," said Patrick Green of Friends of the Earth International.
Widely known but little acknowledged at the conference, he said, is the fact that Kyoto's emissions cuts alone will barely put a dent in greenhouse gas levels over the next few decades.
On that point, global warming activists and skeptics were in full agreement.
"It's complete lunacy," said Fred Singer, a University of Virginia scientist and prominent skeptic on global warming. "Kyoto is not going to achieve anything."
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