| The Kyoto Protocol as Russia's foreign policy trump card The Kyoto Protocol, which limits the amount of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, will still be ratified by Russia. Yesterday at its meeting the protocol was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers. Although the document has yet to be ratified by parliament, few doubt the outcome of the parliamentary vote. Moreover, the decision to ratify the protocol was taken at the highest level and is clearly politically motivated.
“We warmly welcome this decision,” European Commission spokesman Reino Kemppinen said in Brussels and added: “The final confirmation of this, of course, will be official ratification by parliament. We hope this will happen in the coming weeks, since the government and the president have a majority in parliament.”
True, the head of the State Duma Committee on International Affairs, Konstantin Kosachev, warned that the process of preparing for ratification will take a lot of time, since “three components - economic, environmental and political” will be analyzed by three specialized committees. However, the European official is right: if the president deems it necessary, all committees will be completed in a week.
The discussion of the Kyoto Protocol at the government meeting was extremely heated, although the outcome of the discussion was a foregone conclusion. A day earlier, a cabinet source told reporters that the Kyoto accords would be approved. Therefore, opponents of the system of environmental self-restraints were listened to, but that’s all.
Director of the Institute for Climate Change and Ecology of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Yuri Israel, said at the meeting that the position of the Russian Academy of Sciences is unchanged: the protocol is ineffective and does not give the country any advantages. “If we get anything from the sale of quotas, it will be 200-400 million euros,” said Mr. Israel. “Although this is a lot of money for me, it is an insignificant amount for the state’s economy.” According to estimates by the most ardent opponent of the Kyoto agreements, Presidential Economic Adviser Andrei Illarionov, ratification of the Kyoto Protocol could lead to a loss of about a trillion (!) dollars by 2012 due to the “unproduced volume of resources.” And plans to double GDP can generally be given up. The head of Roshydromet, Alexander Bedritsky, said that Russia could both gain and lose from ratification.
But the Minister of Industry and Energy Viktor Khristenko, despite the fact that his department recently prepared a negative opinion on the Kyoto Protocol, reacted extremely positively to the document. In his opinion, there will always be scientific speculation, and in terms of money, Kyoto is very promising. Deputy Foreign Minister Yuri Fedotov is convinced that refusal to sign will lead not only to political, but also to economic costs.
But it was Andrei Illarionov who outlined the logic of Russia’s adoption of the protocol: “We understand that this is a forced decision, this is not a decision that we make with pleasure.”
Russia is not having fun. Experts agree that the reasons for ratifying the agreements lie solely on the political plane. After all, this topic arose in all cases when Russia conducted any negotiations with the European Union. Brussels tried to exchange Kyoto for both granting Russia the status of a country with a market economy and signing a protocol on the removal of disagreements on the WTO. But then Russia managed to avoid such an exchange.
However, the situation now is such that we actually have to give in to pressure. After all, we have not yet joined the WTO. And then there is the plan proposed by the Kremlin to strengthen the power vertical, which caused a very negative reaction in the West, and although our diplomats, right up to the head of the Foreign Ministry, repeat that this reform is an internal matter of Russia, Moscow must send at least some positive signal to the West. And not so much to the West in general (the USA, as you know, refused to participate in the protocol), but to Europe. If relations with Washington are now based on a joint fight against terrorism, then relations with Europeans, who zealously criticize Moscow for its domestic policies, are now going through difficult times.
Finally, we cannot rule out a situation (which is also talked about in the Russian government) that they will try to remove Russia from the G8. Moreover, there is a pretext for such a decision - Russia is not one of the eight leading countries in the world in terms of economic size, while the other seven states of the elite club are also the seven leading economic powers on the planet.
In such conditions, the signing of the Kyoto Protocol is a demonstration of Russia's ability to remain a loyal and civilized political player in the international arena. This is greenhouse diplomacy.
In 1992, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, after which the Kyoto Protocol was signed in 1997 at the third conference of the parties to the framework convention. According to this document, the signatory states must reduce emissions of harmful gases to 1990 levels. If a participating country reduces emissions beyond a given level, then it has the right to sell its quotas to other states. In addition, the protocol obliges developed countries and countries with economies in transition to limit greenhouse gas emissions by 5% over five years.
To date, 186 countries have acceded to the UN Framework Convention, but only 120 states have directly ratified the Kyoto Protocol. However, in order for the protocol to enter into force, the consent of 55 participating countries, which accounted for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990, is required. In particular, the USA accounts for 35% of emissions, Russia - 17%. After the United States refused to ratify the protocol in 2001, it was Russia that primarily depended on its entry into legal force.
Russia's permitted level of greenhouse gas emissions for 2008-2012 is 100% of the 1990 level. The EU countries as a whole had 92%, Japan 94%, and the US supposed 93%. Experts believe that if the protocol is ratified, Russia could receive $20 billion from the sale of emissions quotas and in the form of financing for the modernization of production. Vera SITNINA, Ivan GORDEEV |
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