Brussels, 08/06/2007 (Agence Europe) - German Chancellor Angela Merkel, president of both the EU and the G8, has had a bit of a lucky escape: the G8 summit in Heiligendamm on 6-8 June could easily have failed to find agreement on action to be taken against climate change after 2012, when the Kyoto Protocol is due to expire. However, Ms Merkel's pugnacity, acknowledged by all, won the day over the United States' initial intransigence (see EUROPE 9439). The result is that the planet's eight most heavily industrialised countries, which are responsible for 40% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, reached a compromise deal, in extremis, on 7 June. This compromise may be lukewarm and non-binding, but it does at least open the way for international post-Kyoto negotiations within the multilateral framework of the UN. That was one of the priorities of the German presidency, seeking to prepare the ground for these negotiations and get from the G8 a political mandate to formally open talks in December of this year, in Bali, at the convention of the parties to the UN Convention on Climate Change (3-14 December) with a view to concluding them in 2009.
Rewarded for all her efforts, Ms Merkel welcomed this breakthrough as a “great success”. She said: “It's the most important decision for the coming two years”. That the G8 acknowledged the need for binding targets on reductions in greenhouse gas emissions was “an important signal”. The agreement was described by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, attending his first G8, as “quite unexpected”. While for Tony Blair, attending his last G8 summit, it was a “major step forward”.
Under the terms of the compromise, the G8 leaders acknowledged the need, in addition to stabilising global emissions, to substantially reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions and to give serious consideration to the decisions by the European Union, Canada and Japan, which call for global emissions to be cut by at least half by 2050. The G8 also agreed to launch international negotiations, under the aegis of the United Nations in December, with a view to concluding them in 2009.
There is no need to be an expert to understand, on reading the final press release, that the targets for reduction are not binding. George Bush could not be moved on this point, but the United States, which has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, has acknowledged for the first time that it, too, has to get down to reducing emissions. The ambitious climate strategies announced by India and China, because they contain quantified targets, probably contributed to this step forward. The Americans have always insisted that the emerging countries, which emit huge amounts of greenhouse gases (but which have no historic responsibility for global warming), should be part of any programme before they themselves would take part. The G8 press release, indeed, contains an invitation to the main emerging economies to join the industrialised countries in their efforts.
The text, however, contains no detail on the period of reference on which calculations for reductions will be based (for the EU, it is 1990, the Kyoto Protocol reference year, for Canada, the reference is the current level of emissions). Contrary to Ms Merkel's hopes, neither is there any mention of the need to keep temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-Industrial Revolution levels - without which, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), climate change will reach dramatic proportions. The text does, however, mention the work of the IPCC and presents the acceptance of the science set out in the reports as the basis on which the G8 guidelines were built.
For the NGO Friends of the Earth (FoE), the G8 had brought forward an agreement that was “weak and lacks substance,” but one which “reveals the urgent need to tackle climate change”. While acknowledging that some progress had been made thanks to Angela Merkel, FoE said the G8 had “failed to commit to serious targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions” because “all countries except the US and Russia made a non-binding pledge to cut the climate change-causing gases by at least half by 2050”. (an)