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Kathmandu Monday November 27, 2000 Mangshir 12, 2057.
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Failure at the Hague
The other day, the Hague conference on global
climate change concluded without reaching an agreement. It is indeed sad that efforts to
tackle the world’s biggest environmental challenge has failed on account of the
technical differences between the EU and the US. In fact, the unbending stance taken by
the US ravaged the outcome of the twelve-day long conference. The manner in which the
conference ended also shows that signatories have yet to work out a global policy on the
environment.
The Kyoto obligations signed in 1997, sets
the deadline of 2012 for cutting the emission level of green house gases by over five
percent compared to the 1990 level. One of the key mechanisms for cutting the emission
from burning oil, gas and coal, is a planned market among 38 industrialized countries so
that a mechanism can be worked out by which they can claim emission reduction if they sell
clean technology to developing countries. This is a kind of trade in emission. Of the
industrialized countries, the US accounts for a quarter of greenhouse gases. It pollutes
massively with little sacrifice. No wonder then that the US still objects to the Kyoto
obligations. The Hague round was the sixth in a series of Conference of the Parties (COP)
to the UN’s Convention on Climate Change (UNCCC).
For the first time, over 180 signatories
attended the Hague conference to hammer out the contents of a treaty requiring rich
countries to trim pollution from fossil-fuels on which they built their wealth. It is
unfortunate that the Hague round failed to reach consensus on technical questions such as
‘how the carbon market can be worked out and policed?’ One problem arising here
is how to punish countries which persistently violate the Kyoto obligations apart from the
agreement on funds to help poor countries. The "sink issue": whether forests
help the fight against global warming or make it worse, became a fertile ground for the
EU-US squabble. This largely contributed to making the Hague round a sad farce.
It is sad but true that the Hague round
abandoned the promise of global cooperation to protect planet Earth. Had the US not
demanded a mechanism to help ease the cost of meeting the Kyoto targets, things would have
definitely been different. It is a painful halt for which the US has to be blamed more
than the EU. The US failed to or refused to recognise the potential catastrophic
implications of global warming. Its demand to consider trees and farmland as assets for
meeting the Kyoto obligations should not become a criterion. Even developing countries
have expressed their resentment against this. Signatories of Kyoto obligations must,
therefore, come together to introduce a policy that trims emission when they meet in
six-months time even if the US continues to balk.
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