Politicians meeting in The Hague this week risk agreeing a climate treaty that is riddled with loopholes, their chief scientific adviser warned today.
Bob Watson, chairman of the UN鈥檚 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was speaking at the start of the second week of a critical climate conference in The Hague.
The conference is intended to create a rule book to govern the Kyoto Protocol. This set targets for cuts in the emissions of the greenhouse gases believed responsible for global warming.
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Governments have to decide what proportion of these cuts should be achieved by simply burning less fossil fuels and what proportion should come from soaking up their emissions by planting trees and improving farming methods, so-called 鈥渃arbon sinks鈥.
Watson warned that in writing the rules for carbon sinks, 鈥渢hey can design a treaty to protect the environment or to create loopholes.鈥 The biggest potential loophole would give nations the right to benefit from the CO2-absorbing properties of forests that have already been planted.
Fertile forests
The IPCC estimates that forests in the rich nations which have set targets naturally absorb up to 1.5 billion tonnes of CO2 a year. This is roughly a quarter of CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels.
But the absorption was not planned and is expected to slow down due to the effects of global warming. According to Watson the biggest cause is the widespread replanting of forests and improvements in forest management in North America and Europe over the past half-century.
鈥淭he key political question here is whether that natural carbon uptake should be counted towards countries鈥 obligations under the protocol,鈥 said Watson.
One reading of the protocol says that it should not count, because the forests were mostly planted before 1990, the baseline year for the protocol. But, according to Watson, the US wants to take credit for 鈥渟ome, at least鈥 of the uptake.
Forest uptake in the US may currently be equal to as much as 20 per cent of that country鈥檚 CO2 emissions. In theory, the US could use a lax drafting of the Protocol鈥檚 rules for sinks to meet half of its future treaty obligations without cutting emissions.
Ploughing plan
Delegates here increasingly believe that, despite very slow progress in the first week, there will be an agreement at the end of the week鈥檚 talks. But it could hinge on conceding to the demands of the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand for generous rules on domestic sink projects.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Americans see a vital 鈥渟ink鈥 role for farm soils as well as forests. US delegates say that farmers could absorb tens of millions of tonnes of carbon into their soils each year by abandoning ploughing.
Ploughing is normally carried out to help kill weeds, but it also lets oxygen into the topsoil. This speeds the rotting of organic matter and that carbon is released as CO2.
Advocates say ploughing could be replaced by a chemical herbicide, meaning unploughed soil would rapidly accumulate carbon.
鈥淭hey believe it could be done quickly and easily, and would go a long way to meeting their Kyoto target,鈥 said policy analyst John Lanchbery of Britain鈥檚 Royal Society for the Protection of Birds.