Greece suspended from U.N. Kyoto carbon trading

Greece has been suspended from UN carbon trading in an unprecedented punishment for violating greenhouse gas reporting rules that underpin a fight against global warming, officials said.

A group of legal experts enforcing compliance with the UN's Kyoto Protocol also said it was opening proceedings against Canada for alleged violations of rules on accounting for heat-trapping gases.

"Greece is declared to be in non-compliance," the enforcement branch said in a statement distributed by the Bonn-based UN Climate Change Secretariat, the first such ruling since Kyoto entered into force in 2005.

Athens had failed to maintain a proper national system for recording greenhouse gas emissions, key to ensuring compliance with the Protocol seeking to slow temperature rises that could bring more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas.

"Greece is not eligible to participate in the (trading) mechanisms...of the protocol pending the resolution of the question of implementation," the enforcement branch said of a finding, formally confirmed last week.

Submission of new data by Greece had not entirely convinced the compliance experts, who were seeking extra opinions, said a UN official who declined to be named.

"This case shows that the compliance committee of the Kyoto Protocol is up and running properly," said John Hay, spokesman of the Climate Change Secretariat, of the Greek ruling.

The Kyoto Protocol imposes a cap on emissions of greenhouse gas by some 37 industrialised countries but allows them to meet their targets by paying for emissions cuts elsewhere, such as in the developing world or former east bloc nations.

The ruling means that Greece is barred from such offsetting except under one track of emissions trading with former communist countries. Greek companies would still be able to take part in a European Union market for carbon dioxide.