EU reacts to US climate change pact

A US-led six nation climate change agreement is not a threat to the Kyoto protocol, the European Commission has said.

The existence of the pact, between the US, Australia, China, India, Japan and South Korea, was revealed by US deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick on Wednesday during ASEAN talks in Laos.

The pact, unlike the Kyoto protocol, is non binding, has no targets and focuses on tackling global warming by creating and selling new carbon cutting technologies.

The European Commission, despite the fact that the six nations in the deal account for almost half the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, dismissed fears that the agreement would bring about a collapse of Kyoto.

“Let’s be clear about what this agreement is,” said a commission spokeswoman on Thursday.

“It’s a partnership agreement, a bilateral regional agreement supporting and not replacing the Kyoto protocol.”

“[The announcement] says very clearly that it is consistent with our efforts under the UN framework convention on climate change and will compliment and not replace Kyoto,”

Brussels has welcomed the deal as underlining the growing awareness of the seriousness of climate change and said it would help to strengthen the momentum of current discussions on achieving a global climate change deal when Kyoto runs out in 2012.

“In short we welcome it, we think it compliments and in addition we are also encouraged by this agreement because it is in line with our own efforts,” said the spokeswoman.

But the move has also been interpreted as an effort by the US and Australia, staunch critics of Kyoto, to bypass and move beyond the troubled protocol.

Australian environment minister, Ian Campbell said the six nation pact had specifically been put together as an alternative to Kyoto.

“It is quite clear that the Kyoto protocol won’t get the world to where it wants to go,” said Campbell in an article in the UK’s Guardian newspaper.

“We have got to find something that works better, we need to develop technologies which can be developed in Australia and exported around the world.”

“[Kyoto] engages very few countries, most of the countries in it will not reach their targets, and it ignores the big looming problem - that’s the rapidly developing countries.”

Environmental groups were also unclear about the pacts true motives.

“This could be a simple attempt to derail UN negotiations later this year on setting legally binding emissions reductions for the post-2012 period,” said Mahi Sideridou of Greenpeace.

“Voluntary technology agreements are not going to achieve the 70-80 per cent cuts needed by industrialised countries by mid-century in order to avoid catastrophic climate change.”

“This is another attempt to undermine Kyoto and a message to the developing world to buy US technology and not to worry about targets and timetables,” said Tony Juniper of Friends of the Earth.

The commission has dismissed these suggestions saying that the EU was currently working on its own bilateral agreements such as clean coal with China.

“We are cooperating on carbon capture and we are doing things in terms of clean energy with the developing world,” said the spokeswoman.

But the commission sees new technologies as complimentary, not a substitute for targets.

“We have a number of initiatives ourselves and [Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas] has always repeated that while clean technology is one thing it certainly cannot help, in particular when it is done under a voluntary agreement, to make a significant impact on climate change.”

• Previous article
• Next article