The conversation is not in favor of the poor

(Photo: AP )

Many doubted that the next meeting of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol in The Hague would decide to make a final decision on trading quotas for greenhouse gas emissions. But no one assumed that no official documents would be adopted at all. The confused negotiators could not even decide what to do next - either to convene an extraordinary meeting of the parties, or to postpone everything until the next one, scheduled for May next year.

Meanwhile, the contradictions that blew up the meeting were known in advance. Everyone knew that the main emitter of carbon dioxide - the United States - would not be able to fulfill its obligations to reduce emissions on its own territory under any circumstances. This means that in order for Americans to continue to play these games, they must be allowed to count the carbon sequestered by forest plantations into the reduction of emissions (which non-governmental organizations strongly protest against), or to buy emission quotas from countries that have exceeded their environmental obligations (which the European Union does not accept - successfully practicing, however, hidden trading of quotas between its members). Everyone knew that the countries of East and South-East Asia would like to count the development of nuclear energy as "Kyoto projects", which Australia and many countries of Western Europe do not want to hear about. (Replacing thermal power plants with nuclear ones does indeed objectively reduce carbon dioxide emissions, but if a new Chernobyl happens somewhere in Indonesia, this could ruin the entire Kyoto process.) They knew - but they proceeded from the fact that within the agreed time frame it was necessary to take some measures (even if absolutely streamlined) documents, but truly important decisions can always be postponed until later. It was this approach that failed in The Hague: it turned out that the delegations that had gathered there did not have the authority to resolve specific controversial issues. When ministers and deputy prime ministers arrived at the meeting, they simply did not have enough time to reach an agreement.

It is clear that, despite the failure of the meeting in The Hague, negotiations will continue. Apparently, they will have to continue under more difficult conditions: even if the main architect of the Kyoto process, Al Gore, settles in the White House, it is unlikely that the United States will make the same concessions that they agreed to in The Hague; Everyone expects a much tougher position from Bush. And in all likelihood, the final decisions will focus not on the direct sale of emission allowances (if such is retained at all), but on “joint implementation projects.” In other words, developing countries, including Russia, will still have the opportunity to earn serious money in the fight against global warming, but only if they themselves do something useful (for example, reduce the energy intensity of their production). For simply maintaining the status quo, they will pay very little or not at all.

By the way, in The Hague the activity of RAO UES, which offered the attention of possible partners an entire exhibition of well-developed “Kyoto projects,” looked very advantageous (especially against the backdrop of the passive position of the official Russian delegation).