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June 1, 1998
BONN -- WWF urged governments Monday not to compromise the Kyoto Climate Change Treaty by approving new measures that would subvert efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, during United Nations meetings this week in Bonn, Germany. "The Kyoto Protocol may have been an important first step in dealing with climate change," said Lars Georg Jensen, policy coordinator, WWF Climate Change Campaign. "But as governments now present their latest proposals for the different methods they can use to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, it's beginning to look like the Protocol could turn out to be a step back for combating climate change."
At the meeting of the Subsidiary Bodies of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), WWF warned governments not to enact so-called "flexibility mechanisms" so that they provide escape clauses from carrying out real emissions reductions. WWF believes the alleged economic benefits of such practices will only pose a more serious threat to the environment. While trading of emission allowances, joint implementation, and reductions through the Clean Development Mechanism have generated much interest, some government proposals for utilizing these measures could actually result in an increase of emissions in some cases.
Jensen warned that if the flexibility mechanisms incorporated in the agreement are not carefully evaluated and properly managed, the Kyoto Protocol will never become a real means of reducing emissions or averting climate change.
"For example, several leading industrialized nations that committed themselves in the Kyoto Protocol to cutting emissions between six and eight percent, might -- through these flexibility mechanisms-- actually increase their national emissions," Jensen said. "They could do this by buying the rights to pollute from countries that have not emitted as much greenhouse gases as they were allowed to under the treaty. Also, these industrialized nations could plant thousands of trees and claim the trees would absorb the increased emissions."
This week's meeting in Bonn is the only scheduled preparatory meeting before the next Conference of the Parties (COP 4) in Buenos Aires, in November. During COP 4, the final details of the treaty must be worked out so that there is enough consensus for the treaty to be ratified and put into force by all signing countries in 1999.
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