FIFTEEN years of international effort to combat climate change appeared doomed after Russia said it would not ratify the Kyoto protocol, the world treaty on global warming.
Russian ratification is fundamental for the treaty to take effect. Andrei Illarionov, a senior economic adviser to President Vladimir Putin, said in an amazing announcement in Moscow that Russia was refusing to sign the agreement, reasoning that to do so would threaten the country's economic growth.
He said, after a meeting between President Putin and European businessmen, "In its current form, this protocol cannot be ratified. The Kyoto protocol places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia. It's impossible to undertake responsibilities that place serious limits on the country's growth."
The decision by Moscow means biting the dust of the mechanism,
agonisingly constructed by thousands officials from more than 150 countries over a decade and a half, for the world to try to deal with its greatest threat. United Nations scientists now predict that global average temperatures may rise by up to 6° C by the end of the century in a profound climatic destabilisation that will result in fiercer storms and rising sea levels.
In large areas of the world, agriculture may become impossible; other parts may become uninhabitable because of flooding, hurricanes, increased disease, or the disappearance of the land. This will take place while the earth's population is rising towards 10 billion or more.
The diplomats were trying to clarify the status of the Russian decision, by saying Moscow has many obstacles in the pact to limit emissions of the greenhouse gases, principally carbon dioxide from motor vehicles and electricity generation, which are causing the atmosphere to heat.
Since the treaty was agreed in
December 1997, 120 countries including Britain have ratified it, but its fate has hung by a Russian thread since President George Bush withdrew the US from it in March 2001, also alleging a threat to economic competitiveness.
The treaty to be effective has to be ratified by nations responsible for 55 per cent or more of the greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of the US, the world's biggest emitter with 25 per cent of the total, this could not be achieved without the Russian contribution of 17 per cent.
On a related story, The Independent notes that since January, many of the predicted consequences of a steadily warming atmosphere have started to come true. In June the World Meteorological Organisation drew attention to extreme weather events across the world and in a highly unusual move, linked them to global warming explicitly.
India, Sri Lanka and the United States have registered record high temperatures, rainfall and tornadoes this year. There have been an
increasing number of scientific reports of rapidly melting ice in both the Arctic and the Antarctic, and rapidly melting mountain glaciers.
Continental Europe has seen forest fires like never before, and great rivers like Italy's Po have been reduced to a trickle.
Meanwhile, The Financial Times points out that something has to be done about global warming. If ever there was a case for taking precautionary action, it is surely in a situation where damage would be colossal, and irreversible. It is not enough to rely on "breakthrough technologies" emerging in energy efficiency, as urged by a senior US official.
Further, The Guardian reports that the Kyoto climate change pact looked to be in trouble after the European Commission warned that 13 of the EU's 15 member states were set to miss their emission reduction targets by a huge margin. The 1997 United Nations pact is seen as the world's only chance to reduce global warming in a meaningful way and requires major industrialised countries to slash
their 1990 greenhouse gas emissions.
However, Margot Wallstrom, the EU's environment commissioner, warned that the EU's own efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions were in crisis. Ms Wallstrom said that only two countries, Sweden and the UK, were on track to meet the EU's target of cutting 1990 greenhouse emissions by 8 percent before 2010 and that 13 of the EU's 15 member states would easily miss that goal.
In related stories, The Daily Telegraph reports that more than half of all ski resorts in the Alps could be forced out of business in the next 50 years by rising temperatures, according to research published.
Low-lying slopes such as Kitzbuhel in Austria and Oberstdorf in Germany may receive so little snow over the next 30 to 50 years that skiing, snowboarding and tobogganing cease to be viable winter industries. The warning comes in a study by the University of Zurich for The United Nations Environment Programme. Its predictions are based on scientific estimates that temperatures will increase by between 1.4°C (2.5°F) and 5.8°C(10.4°F) during this century.
Downhill skiing could disappear altogether at some resorts, while at others, a retreating snow line will cut off base villages from their ski runs as soon as 2030, warned the report by the UN Environment Programme.
"Climate change is happening now. We can measure it," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the UN programme. "This study shows that it is not just the developing world that will suffer."
Billy I Ahmed is a researcher.