Russia will support a new global climate deal only if major powers also sign up and take into account the role Russia’s giant forests play as the lungs of the world, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said on Monday.
Putin, in his first extensive comments on the climate talks, said Russia was ready to support a deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol at next month’s UN climate change conference in Copenhagen.
Russia, the world’s No. 3 emitter of greenhouse gases, is seen as a key player in the talks.
Russia has the world’s largest forest reserves, covering some 8 million square kilometers.
World nations hope to conclude a preliminary agreement at UN climate conference in Copenhagen next month. The UN, now holding a round of climate talks in Barcelona, Spain, has been pressing both industrial and developing nations to commit to firm emission limits.
Industrialized nations are also asked to contribute to an aid fund to help the developing world cope with the effects of climate change.
Moscow’s support for the Kyoto accord in 2004 — seven years after it was drafted — was crucial to its survival as Russia brought the number of ratifying countries to a level required to bring the pact into force. There are now more than 180 signatories.
“It was Russia whose ratification of the Kyoto Protocol made it effective,” Putin told a news conference after talks with Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen.
Putin, who once quipped that a climate change could be positive as Russians would have to buy fewer fur coats, said that Russia was sticking to cutting greenhouse gas emissions to 30 percent below the 1990 level.
Critics have noted, however, that this is largely due to the decline in industry since the 1991 Soviet collapse. Russia’s emissions have been well below the limit set by Kyoto in 1990, allowing Moscow to sell unused emissions credits to countries that exceeded their limits.
“We’ve long known that Russia wants its forests included in a deal. But it’s not provided satisfactory data on deforestation and on forestry management,” said Bill Hare, of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
Russia is now responsible for 5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas pollution. China and the US, by comparison, each account for about 20 percent of world pollution, and the EU generates 14 percent.
UN experts say the world’s total carbon emissions should peak within five to 10 years and then rapidly decline to avert the worst consequences of climate change.
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