The Kyoto Protocol: International Climate Policy for the 21st Century by Sebastian Oberthür and Hermann Ott, Springer-Verlag, DM98, ISBN 354066470X
IT’S one thing working out whether, how and why the Earth’s climate is changing. It’s quite another to work out what to do about it. Decisions have to be taken before all the evidence is in to forestall possible disasters—such as massive crop failure. These decisions have to be taken internationally, wresting agreement from hundreds of competing positions and interests, not least because our climate does not recognise national borders.
Kyoto, Japan, was the venue for the 20th century’s last major international climate agreement in November 1997. In The Kyoto Protocol, Sebastian Oberthür and Hermann Ott of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy in Germany make the international climate negotiations understandable, and at times even like a political thriller. One of the most far-reaching international contracts ever developed emerged from Kyoto. That contract introduced some challenging new instruments for dealing with topics of global concern.
Advertisement
The authors have been involved in this process for many years, so they can give an insider’s picture. The diplomatic process in Kyoto involved—and its essential follow-up involves—thousands of people worldwide from governments, science and lobbying groups. Detailed reports of negotiating meetings may not seem promising material for a gripping book—but so much was at stake here that drama was unavoidable.
In part, agreement was reached through diplomatic brinkmanship. The authors vividly describe how the Chair pesented the parties to the talks with last-minute draft agreements which became, given the pressure from outside the meeting, offers they couldn’t refuse.
The introduction of a number of innovative instruments into international policy-making also played a major role in bringing about agreement. One was the concept of “emissions trading” in which countries with higher carbon dioxide outputs can buy the right to emit more, from countries emitting less. Another instrument is the Clean Development Mechanism that could ideally reward countries funding clean technologies in developing countries.
The weakness of this book is the underlying critical tone it adopts towards such instruments. The authors describe them using phrases such as “buying ourselves free”—which reflect the view of some, mainly European, environmental groups and Green parties that the developed world must reduce its CO2 and other emissions immediately. According to this view, emissions trading is at root an immoral attempt by the developed world, particularly the US, to go on gas-guzzling. Such a view, if translated into policy, would make it very difficult indeed to achieve the consensus with the US that will allow something to be done to avert the probable dangers of climate change.
The authors favour domestic measures by the industrialised countries. But to me it makes no economic sense to make domestic cuts to CO2 emissions when international measures such as emissions trading offer the opportunity to achieve a slowdown in global warming and social development in the less developed world. The urgent need for climate policy makes us understand that we now all inhabit one world. This fact is a consequence of modern information and communication technology as much as global environmental issues. We will have to deal with issues like equal per-capita emission rights, the idea that countries should reduce emissions on a per capita basis. This may be an easier concept for scientists to grasp than for politicians.
Unlike the moralist-environmentalists, I believe these rights should be tradable. Tradability will allow us to couple the international climate regime to the World Trade Organization and its mechanisms for ensuring individual countries’ compliance. This will help us finally to begin building a sustainable global governance system (New Scientist, 4 December 1999, p3). That process will start with the integration of the present regimes for the economic, environmental and social fields into a workable whole.
