Countries meeting at UN environmental conference adopted today the rules for limiting emissions of greenhouse gases under the UN's Kyoto Protocol, but Saudi Arabia held up a key section on policing the accord.
"This is an historic step," Canadian Environment Minister Stephane Dion, host of the November 28th -December 9th talks by about 190 nations, said of the decision by government officials.
"The Kyoto Protocol is now fully operational," he said. Kyoto obliges about 40 rich nations to curb their emissions of heat-trapping gases, mainly from burning fossil fuels in factories, cars and power plants, by 2012.
The voluminous rules include details of accounting for greenhouse gases, how to encourage investments in developing countries, rules for trade in greenhouse gas emissions and reams of other operational details.
The Montreal meeting agreed to all but one of the 22 sections of the rules but Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter, said it wanted rules on compliance to be approved by an amendment to be ratified by all nations, a process that could take years. Saudi delegates argue that an amendment would give the deal more legal teeth.
But environmentalists accused Riyadh of trying to bog down Kyoto, driven by dislike of a scheme likely to force a shift away from oil toward cleaner energies. Jennifer Morgan, climate policy expert at the WWF environmental group, said Saudi Arabia was an ally of the United States, which is not a member of Kyoto, in opposing any discussion of what to do after 2012.
"They're trying to stop any discussion of what to do after 2012," she said. Developing nations have no targets for emissions under Kyoto's first period lasting until 2012.
Kyoto is a tiny step toward braking a warming trend that most scientists say could cause more floods, storms, drive up sea levels, spread diseases and push thousands of species to extinction.
The Kyoto rule book was originally agreed at a conference in Marrakesh, Morocco, in 2001 but needed formal approval at the Montreal meeting to gain legal force. Delegates predicted they would overcome the Saudi objections by the end of the conference.
Environment ministers from around the world will attend the final three days. "I'm absolutely confident that we'll have agreements on the compliance system," said Richard Kinley, acting head of the secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change which oversees Kyoto. And Kyoto backers celebrated despite the Saudi objections.
"This gives the Kyoto Protocol the most innovative rule book we have in multilateral environmental agreements," said Artur Runge-Metzger, head of the European Commission delegation. Kyoto obliges about 40 developed nations to cut their emissions by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The United States pulled out in 2001, saying that it would cost US jobs and wrongly excluded developing nations. Under the compliance system, any country that overshoots its targets will have to make up the shortfall, and an extra 30 percent penalty, in the next period. It can also lose a right for trading emissions of greenhouse gases.