Russia to Reject Pact on Climate, Putin Aide Says

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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/03/international/europe/03KYOT.html?ex=107103
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Russia to Reject Pact on Climate, Putin Aide Says
By STEVEN LEE MYERS and ANDREW C. REVKIN

Published: December 3, 2003


MOSCOW, Dec. 2 - A senior Kremlin official declared Tuesday that Russia
would not ratify the international treaty requiring cuts in the emissions of
gases linked to global warming, delivering what could be a fatal blow to
years of diplomatic efforts.

The official, Andrei N. Illarionov, said in remarks to reporters and in a
subsequent interview that President Vladimir V. Putin had told a group of
European businessmen on Tuesday that the treaty, known as the Kyoto
Protocol, ran counter to Russia's national interests.

"We shall not ratify," said Mr. Illarionov, the senior Kremlin adviser on
economic affairs and an outspoken critic of the treaty, apparently ending
more than a year of uncertainty about Russia's position.

The treaty, completed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 after two years of intense
diplomatic wrangling, would require major industrialized countries, as a
group, to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping
greenhouse gases. The countries would have to, by 2012, reduce the gases by
5.2 percent from 1990 levels.

While 120 countries have ratified the treaty, it can take effect only when
approved by enough countries to account for 55 percent of 1990 emissions
from the industrialized world. Without Russia or the United States, that
threshold cannot be met. In 1990, the United States accounted for 36.1
percent of emissions, and Russia for 17.4 percent.

Russia signed the treaty in 1997, as the United States did under President
Bill Clinton, and expressed support for it until about a year ago. The Bush
administration rejected the pact, essentially giving Russia veto power over
its enactment.

Barring a reversal by Russia, the treaty appears all but dead, leaving
uncertain the future of international cooperation on the question of global
warming.

Russian officials had increasingly voiced concerns about the economic costs
of curtailing such emissions, which come mainly from burning fossil fuels.
They had also questioned whether the warming was caused by human activities
and, even if it was, whether it posed any great risks.

But this was the first time a seemingly unequivocal statement rejecting the
treaty has been made by a top official citing Mr. Putin.

"A number of questions have been raised about the link between carbon
dioxide and climate change, which do not appear convincing," Mr. Illarionov
said in the interview. "And clearly it sets very serious brakes on economic
growth which do not look justified."

Echoing President Bush and many in Congress, Russia has also complained that
major polluters like China and India are not bound by the treaty, giving
them an unfair economic advantage. But mostly, experts say, Russia is
bothered by its declining financial return from joining the treaty.

After the collapse of Soviet-era industry, Russia's emission of gases fell
to an estimated 30 percent below 1990 levels. But its Kyoto target for 2012
was its 1990 levels - meaning it already far exceeded its required
reductions. Thus, Russia stood to gain financially from selling credits that
would allow other countries to exceed the treaty's limits. Some major
Russian industries lobbied for the protocol, seeing it as a way to use the
credits to modernize aging plants.

Without the participation of the United States - which would have been a
major buyer of credits - many officials here concluded that the potential
economic gains were sharply reduced. With the Russian economy increasingly
reliant on oil and gas production and exports, the officials concluded that
the treaty's limits could become a drag on economic growth in the future.

Some independent analysts agreed that there was now little economic
incentive in the treaty for Russia. "Their stake has been transformed from
tens of billions of dollars over five years to tens of millions, if that,"
said Prof. David G. Victor of Stanford University, an expert on the treaty.

The Russian statements reverberated on Tuesday in Milan, where hundreds of
delegates from around the world were in the second day of a two-week meeting
on the pact and an underlying 1992 climate treaty that contains no binding
provisions.