WWF asks EU to ratify the Kyoto protocol
The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) has asked the EU to press for ratification of the Kyoto protocol, the global climate treaty dealing with climate change. Delegations from more than 100 countries are meeting in The Hague to consider a compromise proposal designed to allow the Kyoto protocol on global climate change to be ratified. The EU is continuing to lead efforts to save the treaty following US President George Bush's decision to renounce the protocol. President Bush claimed that the science underlying the need to control CO2 emissions was flawed. However, a scientific report commissioned by him fully supported the science underpinning the reality of climate change, and accepted its conclusions. The two-day informal meeting in The Hague is attempting to come up with a new formula that will be acceptable to a full conference next month in Bonn, Germany. Failure to finalise a deal there would probably derail the agreed timetable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The informal talks at The Hague are intended to ensure success in Bonn. The main issues are whether the treaty can be ratified. This requires at least 55 of the signatory countries, who together account for at least 55 percent of the industrialised world's carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in 1990 to sign up. Europe is willing to ratify the treaty, but Japan and Russia are also needed to make up the CO2 numbers, and so both countries are negotiating for a final version of the treaty that best suits them. In Japan's case, this would probably mean allowing more use of carbon sinks in the form of tree planting. Russia wants to be free to trade CO2 emission credits based on 1990 figures, even though the effect of transition in Russia has been to reduce CO2 emissions by 40 percent in the last decade.