Prodding nations to agree to cut greenhouse emissions

"The new cycle of United Nations discussions on climate change which started last Monday in Bonn are a critical opportunity for the world's nations to mount a serious, far-reaching effort to address this huge and threatening problem", according to Michael Zammit Cutajar, Malta's Ambassador for International Environmental Affairs.

Warmly congratulated in a phone call from the Prime Minister, his designation on Wednesday for a one-year (renewable) term as chairman of the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties (AWG) under the Kyoto Protocol of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) presented a new personal challenge, he told The Sunday Times in an exclusive interview during a short home visit to Malta this weekend.

"As Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC from 1991 to 2002, my role and that of my secretariat was to advise and support nations. As AWG chairman I must now make decisions to facilitate agreements. The group's mandate is to issue a series of negotiated agreements by a target date of 2008 or thereabouts, for post-2012 reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by industrialised countries - for a commitment period which I think should be longer than the present one of five years (2008 to 2012) agreed when the Protocol was adopted in 1997."

"Other discussions now under way, not designed to generate formal negotiated agreements like AWG, aim to arrive at a very broad range of conclusions on how the world's nations will limit and adjust to the impacts of climate change after 2012," he explained. "The United States and Australia, which have not ratified the Kyoto Protocol, are participating in talks about how to achieve the goals of the UNFCCC. All these conclusions will then be formally encapsulated into legal texts and adopted by a future regular annual UNFCCC negotiating conference. The amendment of the Kyoto Protocol is to incorporate a new schedule of emission reduction commitments would then have to be ratified by some, or all parties - an issue yet to be decided."

There was a clear will on the part of the industrialised nations, apart from US and Australia, to undertake substantially larger emission cuts after 2012. However this was conditional on both the USA and Australia, as well as the major emitting countries in the developing world such as China, India, and Brazil (and a number of others) were preparing to make significant efforts to contribute to slowing climate change and reducing its impacts. "Discussions on this latter topic will be in the UNFCCC group, but obviously have an indirect influence on how we get on in AWG, "Mr Zammit Cutajar indicated.

"In particular, the EU has declared it is prepared to commit to major reductions," he continued. "In one of the formal presentations to the AWG, the EU Presidency restated the positions adopted by the recent EU Environment and Spring Councils, built around the central conviction that global temperatures should not be allowed to increase more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels, to avoid disastrous dislocations in the weather and the environment.

"Finally, may I clarify that as a UN pensioner I have offered my services on a voluntary, unpaid basis to the Malta Government, inter alia as Malta's representative to the UNFCCC. My responsibilities as AWG chairman are part of this".