Conference in India Will Focus on Climate Change and Kyoto Protocol

Posted: 23-Oct-2002; Updated: 26-Mar-2007

This week, delegates from 186 countries will travel to New Delhi to attend what some have billed as the biggest meeting on global warming -- officially the Eighth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Our own delegation -- Environmental Defense staff members economist Alina Averchenkova, anthropologist Stephan Schwartzman, and International Counsel Annie Petsonk (together with partners from Russia, Brazil, Chile and the Netherlands) will be on hand for the 10-day conference (October 23-November 3), closely monitoring the talks.

The meeting will focus on the impending entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change -- with the United States notably absent from the pact. When it is ratified by Russia, the Protocol (following a template Environmental Defense largely created) will launch a global greenhouse gas emissions reduction and trading market. Delegates will also focus on key concerns of developing countries, such as how to cope with the expected impacts of climate change.

Environmental Defense staff have been working extensively with counterparts in Russia, advancing the case for ratification. Said Petsonk: "We were heartened when, at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last month, Russian Prime Minister Kasyanov announced that his country expected to ratify the Protocol soon -- even though the Bush Administration has renounced the treaty."

Under the Kyoto Protocol, 38 industrialized nations have agreed to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases linked to global warming -- especially carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. President Bush rejected the protocol last March, arguing that its binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would harm the U.S. economy

At New Delhi, Environmental Defense staff will be working to help get the Protocol switched on and to apprise delegates of the urgent need to map out a strategy that reduces global emissions of long-lived greenhouse gases, keeping limits within a corridor that will prevent dangerous climate change. "We'll face a difficult challenge in light of the Bush Administration's preferred approach," said Petsonk, "which calls on nations simply to adapt to climate change rather than reduce emissions of global warming pollution."

Petsonk summed up the administration's approach as one which, "if embraced by other nations, risks closing the door forever on the possibility of staving off dangerous and irreversible climate change."

COP-8 Information Sites

UNFCC - Official website

Live web casts from COP-8

Government of India, Ministry of the Environment and Forestry

Other Links

U.S. Dept. of State Release (9/30/02)

Global Carbon Credit Market Seen Tripling This Year - Reuters Article (10/18/02)

Climate Talks Will Shift Focus From Emissions - New York Times Article (10/23/02)

U.S. to 'Keep Away' From Talks on Kyoto Pact at Meet - Economic Times (India) Article (10/23/02)

Industrialized Countries Must Set a Good Example at COP-8 - Mainichi Shimbun (Japan) Article (10/23/02)

Trading in Greenhouse Gases - Christian Science Monitor Editorial (10/24/02)