MOMENTUM TO RATIFY KYOTO PROTOCOL ON CLIMATE CHANGE

3 November 1999

BONN - Greenpeace today welcomed commitments by a significant group of industrialised counties to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, in time for it to enter into force (become legal) by 2002, ten years after the Rio Earth summit where the Climate Convention was initiated.

"These commitments give the Kyoto Protocol vital political momentum as the complex details of how to implement the agreement are refined in Bonn this week," said Greenpeace International political director Bill Hare. "This will give hope to those countries most at risk from climate change such as the small island states of the Pacific who face evacuation as sea levels rise and those countries in the path of more frequent severe storms, floods and droughts."

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, in his opening speech last Monday, made a commitment to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in time for it to enter into force by the Rio+10 summit in 2002. Yesterday the European Union and its member states, Japan and New Zealand followed Germany's lead. This group makes up 41% of industrialized country emissions. So far only 14 countries, all of them developing, have ratified the Kyoto Protocol which, to come into force and become international law, requires ratification by industrialised countries responsible for 55 per cent of the developed world's 1990 carbon dioxide emissions. "With the announcements at COP5 we are 80% towards reaching this target in 2002," said Hare. (Ministerial statements to the Bonn meeting on Tuesday afternoon and evening. included: UK, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Greece, Italy, France, Finland, Spain, Ireland, New Zealand.)

The US has been restricted by the US Senate from ratifying the protocol before there is "meaningful participation" from developing countries. However the US delegation told the conference that it supported early ratification without nominating a date.

A number of countries at the Bonn meeting also declared their opposition to the inclusion of nuclear power in the mechanisms to implement the Kyoto protocol. These included; Germany, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Italy, Greece, Indonesia, Singapore, Tuvalu, Nauru and Ireland. The nuclear industry has more than 100 representatives at the Bonn meeting and for many years has been attempting to promote itself as a solution to climate change. Greenpeace is opposed to nuclear technology and joins these countries is demanding that it be excluded from the mechanisms to implement the Kyoto protocol.

Greenpeace also questioned the environmental merits of the Argentinian proposal to take on a voluntary emissions target to allow it to trade in carbon emissions. "Instead of joining the group of countries with formal emission targets, Argentina wants to have the cake and eat it - not take on any formal target, but join the club of emission traders" said Hare. "This opens up a potential new loophole."

The Kyoto Protocol was agreed in Japan in 1997 and set a global target for industrialised countries to reduce greenhouse gases of 5.2 per cent by 2008-2012 with a 1990 baseline. Final decisions on the form of mechanism to implement the protocol will be made next year at the climate summit in The Hague, Holland. "There is still a long way to go to define the mechanisms to implement the protocol but there seems a growing realisation that we are already beginning to feel the effects of climate change, and further delay will be dangerous," said Hare. " Many delegates referred to more frequent extreme weather events such as the recent cyclone in India and hurricane Mitch which devastated Central America.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
- Jon Walter ++-31-653504731,
- Ben Pearson (Nuclear campaigner) ++31-621296916.
- Bill Hare (political director) ++31-621296 899