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Copenhagen agreement must be far more ambitious than the Kyoto Protocol

Signs are increasing that the worldwide recession is bottoming out. As economic growth picks up again, so will demand for energy — and many expect energy prices to rise as a result.

For countries that import a substantial share of their energy needs, such as India and many of the European Union’s member countries, this means higher energy import bills and renewed concerns over energy security.

Greater energy consumption will also aggravate one of the gravest threats the world faces in the 21st century: climate change.

As India has recognised in its National Action Plan on Climate Change, launched last June, the climate challenge can and should be addressed through measures that will also strengthen domestic energy security.

Using energy more efficiently and developing domestic sources of clean, renewable energy such as solar and wind are the key. They increase national energy independence and promote lower-carbon economic growth that contributes to the fight against climate change. Energy efficiency and renewable energies have other advantages too, such as lowering the energy import bill, improving access to energy for the poorer sections of society, and reducing air pollution and its associated health costs.

This week climate change will be back in the international spotlight when negotiators from around the world resume talks in Bonn, Germany to prepare the ground for a United Nations climate agreement that should take over from the Kyoto Protocol after 2012.

The importance of these negotiations, which are due to be completed in December in Copenhagen, cannot be overestimated. They are almost certainly the world’s last chance to stop climate change from reaching dangerous, possibly devastating, levels in the coming decades that would seriously set back economic development and poverty reduction efforts worldwide.

To be effective, the Copenhagen agreement must be far more ambitious than the Kyoto Protocol. All countries, except the least developed, will need to take action.

The industrialised world must lead the way by committing to achieve deep cuts in its emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 2020. The European Union is setting the example here.

We are pressing our industrialised partners to commit to national reduction targets that would cut emissions from developed countries as a group to 30% below 1990 levels by 2020. The EU has recently passed into law a package of measures that will help us reduce our own emissions by 20%, and we are committed to scaling this up to 30% if other countries agree in Copenhagen to do their fair share. In the meantime, the latest emissions data show that the 15 older members of the EU are well on track to meet their Kyoto commitment of cutting emissions by 8% by 2012.

Europe is now looking to the rest of the developed world to make commitments for 2020 that are comparable to ours and, where necessary, to revise the emission offers they have already put on the table.

But the fact is that action by industrialised countries alone is no longer enough. Even if the developed world cuts its emissions to zero tomorrow, we will lose the battle against climate change unless developing countries – and particularly the major emerging economies such as China and India – take action to mitigate the rapid growth in their emissions. Developing countries have a direct interest in doing so since, sadly, it is increasingly clear that they will be the ones hit hardest by floods, droughts, fatal heatwaves and the other impacts of climate change.

It goes without saying that the developed world has a responsibility to support developing countries, both to mitigate their emissions and to adapt to climate change, by increasing its financial, technical assistance and capacity building assistance. The European Union is committed to providing its fair share of this assistance as part of an equitable agreement in Copenhagen.

The latest scientific evidence indicates that, to help get global emissions onto a track that can prevent dangerous climate change, developing countries as a group will need to limit the increase in their emissions to some 15-30% below the levels they would otherwise reach in 2020.

Let me stress that the EU does not see this range as a binding target but rather as an indication of the level of ambition of the actions that developing countries would need to take. Limiting emissions growth by this amount would still leave room for healthy economic expansion. And much of the emissions saving could be achieved at low or even no cost by improving energy efficiency, as India already plans to do.

We propose that developing countries draw up low-carbon development strategies which would set out the actions they plan to limit their emissions and identify those for which they would need external financial or technical assistance. India’s National Action Plan on Climate Change provides a firm basis on which to build its low-carbon strategy.

Besides increased private and public sector funding, the EU also sees a major role for an expanded international carbon market, both in reducing the costs of tackling emissions and in helping to strengthen developing countries’ contribution to the global mitigation effort.

The Clean Development Mechanism has been a success story in terms of channelling investment and technology to India, and much of the demand for these emission credits comes from Europe. We want to see the CDM strengthened for the future by tightening up its environmental integrity and improving its governance.

But we also believe that, it is time to develop new, more effective carbon market mechanisms beyond the CDM, so called sectoral crediting or trading mechanisms. These mechanisms can be tailor made for each country and have the potential to generate one-third or more of the additional investment developing countries will need to tackle their emissions. The international community needs India, as the world’s fifth largest emitter of greenhouse gases, to play its full part in the new global climate agreement. By doing so, India will help to limit its own vulnerability to climate change and to strengthen its national energy security for the future.

(Stavros Dimas is European Commissioner for Environment.)

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