The world is poised for another round of climate change negotiations when the UN Climate Change Conference (COP17) meets in Durban, South Africa from November 28 to December 9.

The conference will discuss the need for new agreement in the aftermath of the 1997 Kyoto protocol, which will come to a close by the end of 2012.

The protocol committed the OECD countries and Russia to reduce their greenhouse emissions by 5 per cent below 1990 level. However, the US failed to ratify and later elected to reduce its emissions by 17 per cent in 2020 from the 2005 level.

In any case, the protocol has not been a great success as OECD emissions increased from 12.4 billion tonnes of CO2 in 1990 to 14.2 in 2010. Only Russia and the European Union (EU) will probably meet their targets and exceed it. Russia reduced its emissions due to the changes in its economy after the demise of the Soviet Union. The EU reduced its CO2 emissions by 8.5 per cent in 2010 from the 1990 level by a set of measures including taxation, efficiency improvement and emission trading.

Future protocol

However, COP17, like the two conferences before it, is unlikely to succeed amid disagreement among countries. While the industrialise countries do not want to continue with a treaty that "only covers countries responsible for a diminishing proportion of humans' carbon emissions" meaning future protocol must include the developing countries, especially China and India. The EU also wants a stronger US commitment.

The call to include the developing countries in upcoming commitments is unlikely to succeed now due to the stage of development of these countries and their needs for energy to raise their peoples standard of living.

The alternative is a plan supported quietly by the EU and the US to aim for a new protocol by 2016 which will become effective by 2020. The Guardian reported recently that "most of the world's leading economies now privately admit that no new global climate agreement will be reached before 2016 at the earliest, and that even if it were negotiated by then, they would stipulate it could not come into force until 2020."

In my view, the reluctance of countries to go for new commitments is the result of past exaggerations by UN bodies including their prediction of 50 million "climate" refugees by 2010. The Inter- Governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has been accused of scaremongering and wild predictions. Still the new IPCC report to COP17 is warning of impending doom in the form of localised floods and droughts.

Wild predictions

But the report is said to be better as it is less affirmative and uses the word "likely" more often as it admitted more strongly the uncertainty of issues surrounding global warming.

However, oil producers should not be complacent as the industrialised countries' linking of environmental policies and energy security is likely to put bigger burden on them in view of reduced oil demand.

International protocol or not, there are many measures taken by countries in the name of saving the environment and Mohammad Al Sabban, Saudi Arabia's chief climate negotiator, recently said "climate policies on the international level are mainly targeting the transportation sector, so they will impact the demand for oil". Saudi Arabia and other oil producers may ask, as per the Climate Convention, for compensation for loss of income from oil sales and will ask the upcoming conference to include projects of carbon capture and storage in the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol.

Solar energy use

While Saudi Arabia is embarking on a wide use of solar energy to reduce its emissions and enhance oil exports, Al Sabban called for economic div-ersification saying, "We are doing a lot to diversify, but we are still far behind reaching a full diversification of our economy. Industrialised nations have said: we don't want your oil, so let us not be under any illusion that oil demand won't change."

The world needs better understanding of environmental risks and apportion burden in accordance with the principle of "common but differentiated" responsibility. The developing countries cannot afford to stop their development in order to protect somebody else in 50 years' time if at all.

 

The writer is a former head of the Energy Studies Department in the Opec Secretariat in Vienna.