Global Policy Forum

By Gillian Handyside

The UN's top official for climate change said says world governments must reach clear decisions on curbing global warming at talks in The Hague in November, or the entire process could collapse. "The Hague is a political deadline," Michael Zammit Cutajar, UN executive secretary for climate change, told reporters late on Friday at the end of UN climate talks in Lyon, France.

"No major industrialised country is going to commit itself to the Kyoto Protocol (treaty) until it knows the economic consequences". In an interview with Reuters Zammit Cutujar stressed there would have to be compromises to win the support of more reluctant countries at the ministerial talks in the Hague on November 13-25. The international Kyoto Protocol signed in 1997 legally obliges Western nations to cut emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by between 2008 and 2012.

Fierce arguments rage over the extent to which states can meet reduction targets by buying permits to pollute. This is cheaper and politically easier than stopping industry and transport spewing out CO2 emissions, which could cut two percent off nations' gross domestic product, according to UN figures. Controversial options proposed at the UN talks include buying credits from states exceeding reduction targets, subtracting CO2 absorbed by forests ("carbon sinks") from targets and financing projects to curb greenhouse gas output in developing countries, such as cleaner power stations.

Zammit Cutujar told Reuters goverments at the Hague should accept the use of carbon sinks and projects in developing countries but must ensure these schemes were based on strict calculations of emissions to prevent cheating. But he disagreed with calls by environmental groups to introduce sanctions for countries which failed to comply with reduction targets in the early stages, saying this would scare them away from ratifying the treaty.

"My personal preference would be to go for rigour in the accounting rules but be a bit softer on compliance until we've got them on board," he said. If countries cheated on emissions they would undermine their plans to bring in a global system for trading pollution permits. Zammit Cutujar said he understood why Saudi Arabia was worried that efforts to cut greenhouse gas output might reduce oil demand but it was unlikely to win its bid for compensation while crude prices were at the current 10-year high.

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