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MARRAKECH, MOROCCO
- November 10 - As environment
ministers from 160 countries agreed on rules for the Kyoto climate
treaty, World Wildlife Fund called on governments today to turn the
agreement into international law by next September's World Summit
on Sustainable Development.
In concluding the Marrakech Accord, ministers have confounded
critics of the agreement, led by the Bush Administration, which had
declared the agreement "dead" earlier this spring.
"The phoenix of the Kyoto Protocol has risen in Marrakech," said
Jennifer Morgan, Director of WWF's Climate Change Campaign. "There
can be no further excuse for governments to delay taking the next
step of ratifying the treaty before next September's Johannesburg
Summit."
Despite vigorous efforts by its opponents, the Kyoto climate
treaty has bounced back from its low point last November when
negotiations stalled in The Hague. The accord maintains the
essential architecture of last July's Bonn Agreement, the landmark
political agreement opening the way to bringing Kyoto into force.
The accord contains rules on a compliance regime with enforceable
and binding consequences for countries that do not meet
their Kyoto commitments. Ministers also completed the final details
of the package for reporting and reviewing countries' inventories,
setting in place a sound system based on IPCC methodologies.
Rules were also finalized for Joint Implementation projects
under which industrialized countries will earn carbon
credits by investing in cleaner technologies in each other's
countries. Similarly, ministers concluded the rules for
the Clean Development Mechanism, which will commence almost
immediately. Today's agreement also formalizes the pledge made in
Bonn channeling an additional Euro 450 million annually to
developing countries from 2005.
WWF is concerned, however, that ministers failed to include a
terms of reference for the work program for sinks in the CDM and
included more carbon credits for forest management carbon in
Russia. Nonetheless, WWF believes that the missing safeguards will
have no fundamental impact on the overall emissions target of the
Protocol.
The talks were not without their problems. Late on Thursday
evening, negotiations were drawing to a conclusion
as the European Union and developing nations reached agreement on
a package proposal tabled by the President. This was summarily
vetoed by Japan, Russia, Canada and Australia which insisted on
further concessions beyond those they had already extracted from
the international community during July's Bonn meeting.
Negotiations continued late into Friday evening. The final barriers
to the successful conclusion of the accord were finally removed by
good will by all countries to finalize the agreement and move on to
ratification.
In response to the weaknesses of the Protocol, environmental
groups vowed in Marrakech to prevent damaging projects from going
ahead that exploit loopholes already written into the Protocol.
WWF's focus will now shift to widening business and public
involvement in measures that achieve Kyoto's emission reduction
goals, placing the emphasis on an enormous range of a string of
cost-effective domestic actions.
The Czech Republic has recently joined Romania in having
ratified Kyoto. New Zealand previously a critic of
key aspects of Kyoto -- was among countries announcing in Marrakech
that it would ratify the treaty.
"The Kyoto Protocol was ready for ratification after July's Bonn
Agreement," said Morgan. "The Marrakech accord takes it a
significant step farther forward and sends an even stronger signal
to the shrinking ranks of doubters in politics and in business to
join in tackling global warming."
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