Eastern Europe's Change of Climate
The Kyoto Protocol in Eastern and Central Europe
By: Dr. Sam Vaknin
Also published by United Press International (UPI)
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Written November 7, 2002
Updated March 4, 2005
The 185 member states of the United Nations Climate Change
Convention will meet shortly to contemplate what steps may be needed to
implement the Kyoto protocol, now ratified by more than 130 countries, including
Russia and the European Union. Signatories have ten years - starting in 2003 -
to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.
In the decade or so of transition, the countries of central and eastern Europe
have suffered droughts and floods in equal measure. They attribute this shift in
climate patterns to global warming. Ironically, the crumbling of their
smokestack industrial infrastructure reduced their emissions by 38 percent
between 1990-2000, according to a report presented at the conference. In
Estonia, transition's poster kid, emissions declined by 56 percent, according to
ETA, the news agency.
The OECD countries increased theirs by 8.4 percent over the same period. This
disparity between rich and poor nations in Europe casts a cynical light over the
European Union's constant environmental castigation of east Europeans. The EU
adopted the Kyoto protocol in May 2002 and committed itself to a total reduction
of 8 percent of emissions by 2012.
Even if wildly optimistic forecasts regarding car usage and the restoration of
central and east Europe's manufacturing base are met - emissions would still be
well in compliance with annex I of the Kyoto protocol, which lists the
reductions required of the candidate countries.
This cannot be said about the current members of the European Union and other
rich, industrialized polities. Lawmakers in the former communist bloc are aware
of it. Quoted by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Russian Federation Council
Science, Culture, Education, Health, and Ecology Committee Chairman Viktor
Shudergov told the news agency Rosbalt in October 2002:
"We must calculate and anticipate the maximum possible improvement for our own
industry so that in a few years we don't find ourselves purchasing (pollution)
quotas. Russia is currently the world's major supplier of oxygen in the
atmosphere. Other countries are using Russia's biological resources to develop
their industries. The USA has every possibility to reduce its own emissions but
refuses to do so. It would have been more useful if the main source of
ecological pollution, the United States, had participated."
Central and east Europeans have a few things going for them as far as the
environment goes. Public transport is more developed in the countries in
transition than in the rest of the continent. Industry - rebuilt from scratch -
invariably comes equipped to minimize pollution. Private cars are less
ubiquitous than in Western Europe. Vast swathes of countryside remain virtually
untouched, serving as "green lungs" and carbon sinks.
If, as the European Commission envisions, a community-wide regime of
emissions-trading is established, the countries east of the Oder-Neisse line
could well benefit as net sellers of unused quotas. According to Ziarul
Financiar, a Romanian financial newspaper, in 2001, the government of Romania
negotiated the sale of some $20 million in carbon dioxide emission rights to
Japan.
A similar deal - this time for c. $4 million - was struck with the Swiss. The
money was used to refurbish the decrepit central heating systems in a few
townships. The interesting twist is that the very enhancement of the energy
efficiency of the antiquated pipelines freed for sale portions of the emissions
quota.
It is telling that Romania was unable or unwilling to sell its emissions to the
United Kingdom, Denmark, or the Netherlands, all three of which host functional
emissions-trading pilot projects. The trading rules are so complex - certain
sectors and gases are excluded and fiendishly intricate auctions regulate the
initial allocation of quotas - that many potential buyers and sellers prefer to
abstain.
Estonia circumvented the nascent exchanges altogether. It convinced the Dutch,
Finns, Germans, and Swedes to invest in reducing carbon dioxide emissions in
Estonia. The reductions, according to the Baltic News Service, will be applied
to the quotas of the investing nations.
Still, the political leadership of most countries in transition understands that
it has at least to be seen to be supportive of the Kyoto process. Russia
announced in the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in
September 2002 its intention to ratify the protocol by the end of 2004, as it
did. A year later (2003), it also hosted the International Conference on Climate
Change. Its then Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov boasted of a one third
reduction in emissions in recent years.
Environment ministries - a novel fixture - have proliferated throughout the
region and, backed by the international community, have become assertive. The
Croat minister of environment, for instance, warned his own government in March,
in his first national report on local climate changes, of international
sanctions due to a considerable increase in the emissions of noxious gases since
1990.
According to the Regional Environmental Center for Central and Eastern Europe,
many countries in the region - including three New Independent States, Ukraine,
Bulgaria, and the Czech Republic - have completed national climate change action
plans. Hungary, Kazakhstan and Russia are preparing theirs. The BBC says that
Slovenia is working on a program of its own, though in compliance with the Kyoto
requirements.
Less scrupulous politicians regard the environment as another way to extract
funds from Western governments and multilateral lending institutions. Especially
active are the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the
World Bank. The former approved $12 million to Vetropak Straza, Croatia's only
glass factory. The money will be invested in a new technology with less harmful
emissions.
Together with Citibank, the EBRD is committed to financing the $470 million
conversion of the Bulgarian thermal power plants, Maritsa 2 and 3 to more
efficient and less polluting coal burning. The Bank is collaborating with the
Dutch to establish a carbon credits market exclusive to its client states - the
countries of central and eastern Europe and the Balkan.
Pollution-phobic European countries - mainly in Scandinavia - work with the
World Bank and match its funds in specific environmental undertakings. Thus, the
Danish Agency of Environment has financed 13 projects in Bulgaria last year,
part of $18 million it has granted that country alone since 1995. It is now
assisting Bulgaria in its application for world Bank funds to counter the
effects of past pollution.
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