Doubts over Russia mar climate change meeting

Strong doubts that Russia will join the Kyoto pact on reducing greenhouse gases are casting a cloud over a UN climate change conference that was to start yesterday, with participants left to devise pollution-battling strategies knowing that what was envisioned as a global treaty might never get off the ground.

When organizers, scientists and environmentalists began planning for the conference, which runs through Dec. 12 in Milan and is expected to draw 80 ministers, many had been hoping that Russia would have joined the protocol.

The treaty, negotiated in 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, sets a target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

To date, 119 parties have signed on to it, but together they account for less than 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, the threshold needed for the treaty to go into force.

After US President George W. Bush rejected the treaty and its mandatory pollution reductions in 2001 as too harmful to the US economy, Russia's support was needed to meet the 55-percent requirement.

But in October, Russian President Vladimir Putin predicted that the pact would fail to reverse climate change, "even with 100 percent compliance."

The Kyoto Protocol would "doom Russia to poverty, weakness and backwardness," said Putin's economic adviser, Andrei Illarionov.

Under the pact, if a country exceeds its emissions levels, it can be forced to cut back on industrial production.

Since the US is the world's largest polluter, its refusal to join Kyoto is already "a big drag" on the battle to fight global warming, said Jonathan Pershing, a geologist who is heading the delegation of the World Resources Institute, a Washington environmental think tank at the conference.

A rejection by Russia will further present a dilemma to those countries which have embraced the treaty, participants said.

"There's a number of forks in the road," Pershing said. "Those countries who have said `yes' go forward without a formal international treaty. But how do you do that?"

Pershing said back-room discussions at the conference will cover the possibilities, including one option that nations could sign a series of bilateral deals with other Kyoto members.

Up for discussion in Milan are rules under which industrialized nations can earn credits toward satisfying their own emission-reducing requirements by helping developing nations, which aren't required under the protocol to reduce emissions.

Eligible projects range from making factories more energy efficient to helping promote forests, which absorb carbon dioxide, a chief greenhouse gas culprit.

"It doesn't matter where a carbon molecule comes from," in terms of overall greenhouse gas buildup, said Alden Meyer, a conference participant from the Union of Concerned Scientists based in Washington.

Meyer noted that the US is a successful pioneer in what's known as emissions trading. Under a federal system, US power companies can sell other companies credits they've earned for producing emissions linked to acid rain that are under capped levels.

The US undersecretary for global affairs, Paula Dobriansky, who will attend the conference's final, high-level sessions, said the discussions will help illustrate "how promoting cleaner energy and energy technology is certainly in the interest of developing and developed countries alike."

The UN said the Milan conference will also evaluate efforts by governments to tackle the climate change challenge.

"That 2003 is on track to be one of the warmest years on record should be a warning that we must all take seriously," said Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Climate Change Convention.

This spring, the EU warned that 10 of its member countries, including conference host Italy, are "way off track" for agreed targets on cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

A rise in average temperatures has been blamed, at least in part, for melting glaciers and rising water levels, prompting fears that coming decades will witness floods, water shortages and hardships for many species.

Retired Vice Admiral Conrad Lautenbacher Jr, administrator of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said some questions about climate change are yet to be fully understood: the length of a carbon cycle, the way the molecule circulates around the planet and what humans contribute to global warming.

The US aims to cut emissions by 18 percent over the next 10 years.

"The current administration has a policy to reduce greenhouse gas emission," Lautenbacher said. "Whether the world accepts that or not is another issue. We are not being irresponsible" by rejecting Kyoto, he contended.