CLIMATE CHANGE NEGOTIATIONS HEADING FOR TROUBLE

15 September 2000

LYON -- Greenpeace today accused the Governments of the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia of refusing to seriously address the need to reduce emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. These emissions are threatening to change the world's climate.

Negotiations in Lyon preparing for the World Conference on Climate Change in The Hague in November concluded today. The USA, Japan, Canada and Australia are demanding that other governments agree to rules that would allow them to substantially increase their emissions of carbon dioxide (the major greenhouse gas) from the burning of fossil fuels.

Bill Hare, Climate Policy Director of Greenpeace International, said that such demands amount to cheating on the commitments made in Japan 1997 in the Kyoto Protocol on climate change.

Independent scientific assessments presented at the Lyon negotiations have confirmed Greenpeace's own calculations that if these countries get their way, emissions would be allowed to increase by 20% or more, rather than the 5% reduction from 1990 levels that the Protocol requires by 2010.

Greenpeace said it is increasingly alarmed by the direction of the international negotiations, which are aimed at the rules for implementing the Kyoto Protocol and which have to conclude at The Hague in November 2000.

"The worst thing that the USA, Japan, Canada and Australia are pushing for is the inclusion of huge amounts of emissions credits from the storage of carbon forests" said Bill Hare. "By and large this storage of carbon in forests would happen anyway and if it is counted it would permit vast increases in fossil fuel use".

Australia for example is trying to define a "forest" as anything higher than 25 centimeters in order to count huge areas of land and the carbon that is being stored naturally on these lands. Japan and Canada are trying to get rules that would allow them to NOT count the emissions from cutting down forests BUT count the carbon stored when plantations are grown back on this land. The USA, Japan and Canada also want to count carbon stored in forests that would have happened anyway, including from natural activities.

Greenpeace said it is concerned also that negotiations on the Clean Development Mechanism are heading towards it being a Cheating Development Mechanism which licenses dirty technologies such as nuclear power, coal and other fossil fuels, as well as a temporary storage of carbon in forests. The USA for example is promoting rules that could give more credit for fossil fuel projects than for clean renewable energy in some cases.

Greenpeace finally regrets that France has failed, both as host country and as holder of the EU Presidency, to provide the necessary leadership required to positively influence the environmental integrity of the Kyoto Protocol. Unless this situation is changed the European Union risks undermining completely its work to combat climate change in the past ten years.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

- Bill Hare +31 621 29 68 99

Visit the 'Policy & Politics' section of Greenpeace's Climate campaign website:
www.greenpeace.org/~climate