Kyoto Protocol comes into force

On Wednesday, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions causing global warming enters into force, accompanied by celebrations worldwide organised by the United Nations, governments and NGOs.

MEPA will mark the event by a public lecture on Tuesday by a visiting German journalist, Michael Gleich, entitled "Life Counts: Bringing global issues home - how to catch the public's attention".

Malta has played a historic role in international climate change issues by tabling a proposal in 1988 at the United Nations General Assembly on protection of the global climate. The subsequent resolution was followed by the negotiation and adoption of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The related Protocol is now ratified by 141 nations, including Malta in 2002, but not the world's largest emitter, the United States.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta's Ambassador for Environmental Affairs, was the UNFCCC's first, highly respected executive secretary, playing a central role in the Kyoto Protocol process until retiring in 2002.

A national climate change strategy was adopted by Cabinet last year, developed as part of the Malta's First National Communication to UNFCCC under a project financed by the Global Environment Facility and led by Dr Charles Sammut (University of Malta).

While the protocol will only deliver a modest cut in emissions by 2012 (some 5 per cent below 1990 levels), concern escalates over the pace and possible impacts of climate change. Moreover, the gradual process visualised in Kyoto is now recognised as being only one possibility - the other being the potentially cataclysmic 'abrupt' climate change, such as the sudden shutdown of the Gulf Stream. An additional threat identified is that a one degree increase in the present global temperature could trigger the irreversible meltdown of polar ice sheets to cause huge sealevel rises.

Shell's chairman, former scientist Lord Oxburgh, has urged tough government action to restrain fossil fuel consumption, while a high-level International Climate Change Task Force recently called for rapid and stringent emission cuts to disactivate 'an ecological time-bomb'.

A major scientific conference organized by the British government two weeks ago also warned that time was running out for taking preventative action. A new Oxford University study states that climate change could prove twice as catastrophic as indicated in previous worst case scenarios, killing or threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people, and triggering an unprecedented economic, social and environmental disaster.

Prime Minister Tony Blair hopes to obtain agreement at the forthcoming G8 summit in Scotland next July on a new 'post-2012 architecture' which can somehow involve both the US as well as persuade major developing country emitters - such as China, Brazil and India - to accept future emission cuts.

Rallying support for the protocol after the US rejection in a huge diplomatic drive, the EU also played a key role in finally obtaining reluctant ratification from Russia last autumn - triggering the protocol's complicated minimum ratification requirements.

However, a Commission policy paper issued last Wednesday on post-2012 issues has been slammed by environmental activists for undermining chances of achieving the EU's agreed goal of limiting the global temperature increase to two degrees above pre-industrial levels. The paper aims to assist next month's EU Environment Council to adopt a comprehensive strategy for the G8 summit and subsequent UN negotiations on future architecture.

Emphasising that benefits of climate change action far outweigh costs, let alone costs of inaction, the paper sets no targets for post-2012 global emission cuts, but instead says developing countries must also agree to reductions; aviation, maritime and forestry emissions must be controlled; technological innovation boosted and emissions trading expanded.

Defending the Commission stance, Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas stated that "at this stage targets would tie the EU's hand in international climate negotiations At a certain moment, of course, we are going to have targets. We think it is premature to use them now".