Kyoto Protocol may fail without EU’s legal nod

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Nitin Sethi TNN

New Delhi: The Kyoto Protocol — the only global pact that legally requires the developed world to reduce emissions at the moment — is on the brink of collapse with indications that the EU and other rich countries will not be able to ratify it in time to kickstart the second round of emission cuts that are meant to be launched in 2013.
At a ministerial-level meeting of select countries held in Seoul recently, it emerged that after all the tradeoffs developing countries made to keep the protocol alive, it could still die by the end of the year with a lack of legal mandate for its continuation.
The meeting, referred to as the Pre-COP, held by key countries to gauge each others’ positions before the annual negotiations of all UN members begins in Doha in November, indicated that the EU, along with its new-found allies in the small island countries, will push emerging nations to immediately take on higher level of ‘voluntary’ commitments, delinking the emission-reduction steps from the financial and technological commitments of the developed world.
At the Durban meet last year, India, China and other emerging countries had struck a bargain with the EU to launch a process for a new post-2020 climate regime (called the Durban Platform) against the commitment that the EU would take on higher emission-reduction targets under the second period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol starting 2013.
But it now emerges that the bargain may have been one-sided with the EU indicating that it would not be able to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in time. Without ratification, along with the exact emission-reduction targets inscribed under the UN process, the protocol will continue to exist as an empty shell with no real obligations.
At the Seoul meeting, sources said several countries cutting across the spectrum of the G77+China group of developing countries demanded that the rich nations find a way to ensure that the protocol does not lapse. But they remained wary that the EU would ask for more concessions from poorer countries, especially the emerging economies, before it commits to making the Kyoto Protocol operational post-2013.
The developing countries are keen that a form of provisional ratification be put in place at the Doha meeting in November to ensure that the EU and other developed countries do not walk out of their existing obligations even as they push for greater commitments for reducing emissions by the developing world.