London, 7 September 2011: Point Carbon

The EU gave its clearest indication yet today that it is considering backing an extension to the Kyoto Protocol after the troubled climate treaty expires in 2012. The world’s largest emitters including the U.S. and China must take on binding emissions targets under the treaty if the EU is to back an extension, European Climate Action Commissioner Connie Hedegaard told reporters on Wednesday as part of an EU delegation to Australia and New Zealand.

"If we are to keep the Kyoto Protocol alive, we must have some indications that the other big economies are entering at some point,” she said in a statement posted on the EU Commission’s website.

“We are willing to keep that possibility open, but we need other countries - the U.S., emerging economies and others - to say when they are going to commit in a more binding form than we have seen hitherto," Hedegaard added.

The US signed but did not ratify the 1997 treaty, while developed countries including China were not made subject to binding caps.

Officials from EU member states are currently discussing whether to formally back a plan to extend Kyoto.

The backing of the European bloc would be on condition that the protocol expires in 2018 and be replaced with a single global pact that includes capping all major nations’ emissions, government negotiators and observers told Point Carbon News in late August.

If all 27 countries agree, the EU could announce the plan at U.N. climate talks in Durban, South Africa in November as part of an attempt to overcome the four-year impasse over Kyoto’s future.

But Hedegaard warned that an EU backing of a second phase of the protocol, as part of a collective negotiating position for the annual climate talks, would be meaningless if it was not matched by other big emitters.

"Some seem to think that if only Europe took a second commitment period, that would make Durban a big success. The world should not fool itself. It’s only interesting to keep Kyoto alive if somebody is following,” she said.

‘DEVELOPING COUNTRY’ LABEL

Some observers have argued that agreeing an extension could also boost investor confidence in Kyoto's Clean Development Mechanism ( CDM), which generates carbon offsets through investment in CO2-reducing technologies in emerging economies.

However, the EU earlier this year rebuffed an offer by the G77 group of developing nations to unilaterally sign a second Kyoto period in return for extending the CDM, which supplies the majority of offsets used by European firms to meet their targets under the EU emissions trading scheme.

And Hedegaard, in another speech made in Auckland, New Zealand on Tuesday, said a distinction must be made in the climate debate between different types of developing nations, possibly widening the gap between the negotiating positions of the EU and the G77.

“While we recognise that there are still a lot of poor people in rural areas, when we talk about countries like China, India and Brazil they are not developing countries in the sense the Solomon Islands or Mali or Malawi are. So I think we need some more distinctions in the debate,” she said, as reported by the NZ Herald newspaper.

“The time must end when the emerging economies account for more and more emissions, have more and more of global growth but can continue to hide behind the label of 'developing country'."

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