NEW DELHI, FEB 17 — Experts feel that there is no guarantee that the coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol will ensure slowdown in the process of the ongoing global climate change.
Third World countries will continue to bear the brunt of various natural disasters on account of climate change. Rather, these countries will be forced to procure various adaptation technologies from multinational companies based in the industrialised world, they said.
The global environmental treaty, Kyoto Protocol came into effect from February 16, 2005 with 34 industrialised countries legally bound to slash their polluting emissions. But US and Australia which account for 30% of the global greenhouse gas pollution have kept themselves out of the treaty.
Political analysts feel that the US may use Chapter 11 of NAFTA and exert pressure on Canada and Mexico, which are part of the Kyoto Protocol, to slow down implementation of the investment-related matters of the protocol.
Developing countries have no obligations to reduce their already low levels of emission under the treaty. Industrialised countries are obliged to reduce their emissions 5.28% to below 1990 levels by 2008-12. In this context, the global scientific community has said that a reduction of 5.28% in emission level in industrialised countries is not enough to reverse the process of global climate change. Global greenhouse gas emissions need to be reduced by over 60% below the 1990 level.
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Toxics Link |
Speaking to FE, director of the Delhi-based Toxics Link Ravi Aggarwal said, “As US and Australia kept themselves out of the treaty their combined emission level will increase to a considerable extent beyond 30%, accentuating the process of global climate change. Apart from US and Australia, the other industrialised countries which are committed to the treaty will find an opportunity to push the adaptation technologies of multinational companies in the Third World. ”He said that even those industrialised countries which are committed to the treaty will stress more on adaptation of new technologies rather than emphasising on mitigation of climate change.
A group of social and environmental activists from various countries including India, calling themselves as ‘Durban group’ said “the carbon trading prompted by the Protocol hands Northern governments and corporations lucrative tradeable rights to use the earth’s natural carbon-cycling capacity, effectively stealing a public good away from most of the planet’s inhabitants.”
Citing an example the Durban group said that in the last month the Danish power utility, Energi E2 sold hundreds of thousands of dollars of the rights it had been granted free by the government to Shell after mild temperatures kept the utility’s carbon emissions below expected levels. No such free rights were granted to ordinary citizens.Attempts to create ‘carbon dioxide-saving’ projects have already stirred protests from Brazil to South Africa. “Such projects, which include industrial tree plantations and schemes to burn-off landfill gas, are designed to license big emitters in the rich North to go on using fossil fuels. Such plantation projects in the Third World usurp land and water only to allow rich countries to emit more greenhouse gases,’ the Durban group said.
source: http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=82911 18feb2005
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