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PRESS RELEASE

Governments resume search for deal on greenhouse gas cuts

Bonn, 31 July 1997 - The seventh round of talks on a common international strategy for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases from developed countries starts here today and runs through 7 August.

This meeting comes just a few weeks after emissions targets and timetables dominated the agendas of the UN General Assembly's "Rio+five" Earth Summit and the Denver "Summit of the Eight". After a final negotiating session in late October, ministers will gather in Kyoto, Japan, in early December to finalize the resulting amendment or protocol to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The starting point for the current negotiating session is a text of over 100 pages compiled by the Chairman of the Ad hoc Group on the Berlin Mandate (AGBM), Ambassador Raul Estrada-Oyuela of Argentina. According to the rules of the game for adopting a protocol or amending the Convention, the Kyoto outcome must be recognizably present in this text, even though the proposals it contains may be refined and target numbers for emissions cuts still added.

The text already contains some possible target numbers, including a proposal from the European Union (EU) that developed countries cut their emissions by 15% by the year 2010 compared to 1990 levels (since then the EU has also indicated a preference for an interim target of 7.5% by 2005). These reductions would apply to a basket of three gases - carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N20) - with other gases to be added later.

The other major industrialized powers have not yet proposed any specific figures. This is partly because targets and timetables are closely linked to several other critical but unresolved issues.

One of these is "flexibility" in how emissions cuts are made. Governments must decide: Should a target be expressed as a certain level to be achieved by a specific date, or as a "budget" to be achieved over a period of several years? Should it be possible to "bank" any over achievement in a given period for future use, or to "borrow"(with a penalty charge) from the next budget period to cover underachievement during the current one? Should developed countries be allowed to achieve part or all of their committed emission reductions "offshore" at less cost through joint implementation (JI) or emissions trading?

Another issue is "differentiation". Governments must determine whether the same target will apply to all developed countries or whether each developed country will have an individual target that reflects its economic profile (emissions intensity of GDP, for example). Supporters of differentiation argue that individual targets would help equalize the economic costs to each country of achieving its target.

Under the 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 was established to negotiate new developed-country commitments for the post-2000 period. The AGBM is also tasked with advancing the implementation of existing commitments by both developed and developing countries.

The current session of the AGBM is being held at the Hotel Maritim in Bonn in tandem with the sessions of three other "subsidiary bodies"; the Subsidiary Body for Implementation, the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technical Advice, and the Ad hoc Group on Article 13 will meet during the period of 28-30 July and again on 5 August (the AGBM will therefore not be in session on this date). Their work programmes include the "national Communications" that governments submit to describe their climate change activities, the Global Environment Facility ( which is the Convention's interim financial "mechanism"), technology transfer, and AIJ (activities implemented jointly).

The Climate Change Convention was opened for signature at the 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 scientists and other experts sponsored by the UN Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization.

According to the IPCC, current trends in greenhouse gas emissions are likely to cause the average global temperature to increase by 1-3.5 degrees C over the next 100 years. As a result, sea levels are expected to rise by 15 to 95 cm and climate zones to shift towards the poles by 150 to 550 km in mid latitudes. Forests, deserts, rangelands, and other unmanaged ecosystems would face new climatic stresses, as would human societies, health, and infrastructure.

Note to journalists:

For more information, please contact Michael Williams, Information Unit for Conventions, Geneva at (+41-22) 979 9242/44, fax (+41-22) 797 3464, e-mail: mwilliams@unep.ch
For information on accreditation and related matters, please contact Axel Wustenhagen, UN Information Centre in Bonn, at (+49-228) 815 2770, fax: (+49-228) 815 2777, e-mail: unic@uno.de
Official documents and other materials are available in English on the Internet at http://www.unfccc.de