Waiting game is over for controversial Kyoto Protocol

Stevie Emilia, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The tense, grim expressions on the faces of environmentalists and scientists who support the Kyoto Protocol will be a thing of the past after their seven-year wait officially ends on Wednesday, when the treaty finally becomes effective.

In Indonesia, which ratified the treaty last year, the moment is being warmly greeted by environmental activists who view it as a victory for multilateralism over unilateralism.

"It is also a sign that the rest of the world can move multilaterally, even with the hegemony of the United States," said Agus P. Sari, executive director of Pelangi, an environmental policy research institute.

Under the treaty, developed countries are required to enter into legally binding commitments to reduce their collective greenhouse gases by at least 5 percent from 1990 levels by the 2008 to 2012 period.

However, there was a seven-year wait for the treaty to become effective since it had to be signed by no fewer than 55 parties, including developed countries representing at least 55 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions in 1990.

With Russia's ratification last year, the world did not have to wait much longer for big emitter the U.S., which has refused to ratify the protocol, believing it would hurt its economy. Its only ally now is Australia.

Agus said the treaty was not only about emissions reductions but also about coping with the impact of climate change, as well as the transfer of clean technology and capacity building.

Indonesia, he said, would benefit greatly because it was vulnerable with regard to climate change, which, he added, might pose risks to the country's coastal areas with rising sea levels.

"The Kyoto Protocol will allow Indonesia to increase its resilience to climate change, for instance, by increasing its capacity to adapt to rising sea levels, prolonged droughts, shortened but intensified rains and to climate change-related `natural disasters,'" he said.

WWF Indonesia climate and energy program coordinator Eka Melisa said the treaty was a step toward containing the climate change threat at a manageable level.

"As a country with a unique profile of climate change, Indonesia's greenhouse gases have spiraled due to rapid development in the energy sector, while its vulnerable communities and ecosystems have suffered from climate change. Adaptation has become a significant necessity for Indonesia and support is essential," Eka said.

She also pointed out that with the treaty becoming effective, a new market revolution -- a carbon market -- would emerge, whereby companies and countries in the Kyoto Club, an unofficial name for countries that have ratified the treaty, would be obliged to value their CO2 emissions as they would now have a formal price tag.

As a result of this progress, she said, companies from developed countries that had or would have investment in developing countries such as Indonesia, would have to calculate the total emission they would produce and, ultimately, would have to choose more clean energy sources and/or sustainable technology for every new investment.

"Developing countries like Indonesia will have the chance to use this development as an incentive to change their energy sector to become more clean and sustainable," Eka said.

However, to benefit directly from this emerging market, she said Indonesia had to be fully prepared domestically and to complete all the steps needed to become a host country for such a project, such as by launching a designated national authority as soon as possible and establishing domestic climate change policies.

Agus said Indonesia had about 250 million tons of emission reduction potential that could be certified under the carbon trade mechanism in the period between 2008 and 2012.

"This means about US$1.25 billion, if (the carbon is) valued at $5 per ton. Usually, this is what motivates many developing countries to ratify the Kyoto Protocol," he said.

However, controversy over the protocol, as well as climate change issues, still exist. But Agus said the number of scientists who agreed that climate change was already occurring and would continue to worsen in the future was much greater than those who took the opposite view.

"I have seen the science and I agree that the risk we are facing is great, clear and serious," said Agus, a lead author of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's most authoritative scientific body on climate change.

"Risks are, by definition, a statistical inference. But risks work both ways -- they can get better, or worse. And the research shows that the likelihood of being worse is much greater than being better.

"It also shows that we don't know everything, but what we already know is enough to warrant action," he said.

He acknowledged more steps were needed, as well as more radical reductions, to achieve the goal of a "safe level" of climate change-inducing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.

"The protocol is an essential first step, the key to starting more initiatives in the future. And this is what should keep us optimistic."