United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - Secretariat

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not an official document.

Bonn, 31 October 1997 - Delegates from 142 countries are leaving Bonn today after revising the draft text of a new emissions-reduction agreement to be adopted at the Kyoto Climate Change Conference. This final preparatory meeting will be resumed on 30 November in Kyoto just in advance of the 1-10 December Kyoto conference in order to take on board any progress made during bilateral and other meetings over the next four weeks.

"The text that I brought to this meeting was conceived as a compromise text, but now many of the views on all sides of the issue have been re-introduced", says Amb. Raul Estrada-Oyuela of Argentina, who has chaired the talks. "As a result, we now have a text that is complete but that still contains a mosaic of different positions."

The Kyoto agreement will contain legally binding commitments by developed countries to reduce their emissions by around the year 2010. During the meeting's early days last week the US and the Group of 77 and China (the developing countries) for the first time introduced their proposed targets and timetables.

The US proposal, announced by President Bill Clinton, calls for developed countries to return their emissions of all greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by 2008-2012 (taken as an average over these years) and to reduce emissions below 1990 levels in the five years following. The G-77 proposes that developed countries reduce emissions below 1990 levels of 7.5% by 2005, 15% by 2010, and 35% by 2020; it also provides for a compensation fund that would benefit developing countries harmed by climate change or by the economic actions taken by developed countries to combat it.

These new proposals join others that were already on the table. The European Union has called for 7.5% cuts in carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide by the year 2005 and 15% cuts by 2010. Japan - which as host government of the Kyoto conference has a central role to play in finding a consensus - proposes a reduction of 5% by 2008-2012; however, it would also allow individual national targets to be lower than this. Members of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), threatened by sea-level rise, want to see a 20% rollback by 2005. The baseline for all of these reductions would be the year 1990.

"Over the next few weeks the key players must review their options so that they can come to Kyoto with more flexible positions, even if this means that we end up with an agreement based not on a single target, but on different targets for each country", says Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Convention's Executive Secretary.

Over the past two weeks negotiators have discussed these differing proposals as well as a number of closely linked issues that would determine just how any targets and timetables will be achieved. These include the questions of:

* Differentiation. The issue of whether all developed countries should have the same target or individual targets that reflect national circumstances moved to the fore again after the submission of the US and G-77 proposals with their widely divergent targets; the Russian Federation has proposed that each country commit to its own target proposal, leading to an overall reduction of some 3% below 1990 levels by 2010. The EU's "bubble", allowing EU members to differentiate internally, was also discussed.

* Flexibility. The question remains open as to whether countries should be allowed to trade emissions quotas with one another, receive credit for reducing emissions from other countries, "bank" reductions for future credit if they exceed their current target, or "borrow" from the future if they miss their target.

* Policies and measures. The EU prefers mandatory policies and measures with consultations to coordinate their implementation. Other developed countries oppose mandatory requirements, and developing countries are concerned that their economies not be negatively affected by developed country actions.

The Ad hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate will pass its findings and a draft text to its parent body, the Conference of the Parties (COP), which holds its third session in Kyoto from 1-10 December. The current meeting was attended by 700 delegates and 570 observers; at least several thousand participants are expected in Kyoto.

Under the Climate Change Convention, developed countries have agreed to take measures aimed at returning their greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000. At the first session of the treaty's Conference of the Parties (COP) in 1995, the international community recognized that stronger measures were needed to minimize the risk of climate change. The Ad hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate (AGBM) was established to negotiate new developed-country commitments for the post-2000 period. While these negotiations explicitly exclude discussing new commitments for developing countries, the Group is also tasked with advancing the implementation of existing commitments by both developed and developing countries.

The Convention was opened for signature at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. It entered into force on 21 March 1994 and has been ratified by close to 170 countries. The treaty negotiations were inspired in large part by the scientific findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), an international network of thousands of scientific and technical experts sponsored by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

Note to journalists: For more information, please contact Michael Williams today in Bonn at (+49-228) 7222325/349 or (+41-79) 4091528 (portable); from Monday the contact in Geneva is (+41-22) 979 9242/44, fax (+41-22) 797 3464, e-mail mwilliams@unep.ch, or in Bonn contact Axel Wustenhagen, UN Information Centre, Bonn, at (+49-228) 815 2770, fax (+49-228) 815 1999, e-mail unic@uno.de. Official documents and other materials are available in English on the Internet at http://www.unfccc.de.