Talks Begin on Global Warming

U.N. talks to seal an unprecedented climate change treaty got underway here Monday with the world’s biggest polluter, the United States, taking a back seat.

The 2,000 delegates from 160 countries have two weeks to set out in legal detail principles adopted in Bonn, Germany, in July on making significant cuts in the next decade in emissions of the “greenhouse gases” blamed for raising the Earth’s temperature.

The treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol and forged in 1997 in Japan, must be ratified by a majority of industrial nations responsible for global warming in order to take effect.

It aims to reduce emissions of greenhouses gases by an average of 5% from 1990 levels by 2012.

“In Marrakesh, the focus will be on completing the translation of the Bonn agreements into legal language,” Jan Pronk, the Netherlands’ environment minister and the outgoing conference chairman, told the opening plenary session.

A last-minute political compromise on the main issues was reached in Bonn three months ago, and the Marrakesh session is expected to produce a legally binding document.

“You can put the icing on the Bonn cake,” Pronk told delegates, urging them to set aside political differences. “Don’t renegotiate a political agreement already reached. Just work it out.”

The environmental group Greenpeace sounded a less optimistic note, saying that rules already agreed on are so weak that they would be unlikely to lead to a reduction of greenhouse emissions.

“Even the protocol’s nominal target of a 5% reduction hardly started the process of making the 80% reductions needed to prevent dangerous levels of climate change,” said Bill Hare, Greenpeace’s climate policy director.

The Marrakesh conference “must not be muddled with diplomatic double talk. . . . The processes that underpin the protocol must be transparent and open for public participation,” he added in a communique.

Washington pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol in March, calling it flawed and harmful to the U.S. economy.

Though represented in Marrakesh, the U.S.--the world’s biggest industrial power and biggest polluter--is not expected to play an active role, delegates said. This makes the support of the 15 European Union countries and Russia vital to the success of the meeting.

The treaty will take effect if ratified by 55 countries responsible for 55% of emissions in 1990. Russia produced about 17% of those 11 years ago.

So far, 40 nations have ratified the treaty.

Michael Zummit Cutajar, executive secretary of the Climate Change Convention, said there are no obstacles on major issues.

From Russia “what’s on the table is larger allowances for the use of sinks,” he told a news conference.

“Sinks” is jargon for the forests and farms that absorb carbon from the Earth’s atmosphere. The deal allows Russia, Japan and Canada to use these widely to reach their goals.

Conference organizers have stressed the importance of the venue, a Muslim country in Africa.

“Widespread poverty, recurrent drought and floods, and dependence on rain-fed agriculture, forestry and fisheries make this continent and its people most vulnerable to climate change,” said Zummit Cutajar.

The Marrakesh meeting, attended by about 4,000 people including journalists and representatives of nongovernmental organizations, is the seventh conference of the parties to a U.N. treaty signed in 1992 at the first Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro.