Activists lament meager results of climate talks

By Nizar Al-Aly

Marrakesh, Morocco, Nov. 12 (IPS)— After two weeks of tough bargaining, representatives from 167 countries managed to hammer out an accord that would pave the way for the ratification of a treaty aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Environmental organizations and scientists expressed disappointment with the results of the talks.

The accord, reached in the southern Moroccan city of Marrakesh at the weekend, provides for a detailed rulebook governing the complex Kyoto Protocol devised in 1997 in the Japanese city of Kyoto.

The document commits industrialized countries to cut by 2012 their emissions of carbon dioxide — suspected of causing global warming — by an average of five percent from 1990 levels.

The pact was in jeopardy last March when the United States, the world’s largest polluter, pulled out of the agreement on grounds that it is against its economic interests.

However, the agreement was saved through European concessions to other wealthy nations and developing countries on implementation modalities.

The treaty must be ratified by 55 countries, including industrialized nations responsible for 55 percent of the carbon dioxide emitted in 1990, for it to take effect.

The deadline is September 2002, or 10 years after the first action on climate control was adopted at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The long-term aim of the Protocol is to curb what scientists say is the artificial warming of the earth’s climate and its consequences: rising sea levels, melting ice caps, changing rainfall patterns, increasing floods and more frequent droughts.

Official delegations rejoiced that the agreement reached in Marrakesh marked “the irreversible entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol”, as Belgian environment minister, Olivier Deleuze, who led the European Union delegation to the global talks, termed it.

However, environmental protection groups, like Greenpeace, were unimpressed with the Marrakesh accord.

“Marrakesh was a tough battle that yielded a meager result,” the environmental group said in a statement circulated at the end of the conference.

“While climate change is worsening, the future leaders will look back to the Marrakesh conference as a wasted opportunity and will realize that participants in this meeting could have made more efforts to address the real problems,” said Greenpeace Climate Director Bill Hare.

“The Protocol is only a modest beginning towards a more important commitment to reduce global gas emissions. We still have a long path to go,” he added.

According to Greenpeace, gas emissions should be cut by 80 percent to curb the adverse climate changes, drought, floods and other plagues.

The Marrakesh accord caps a four-year effort to draft binding regulations on limiting greenhouse gas emissions and marks the start of a ratification process before the Kyoto Protocol’s concrete beginning.

After the US withdrawal from the Protocol, all eyes turned to Russia and Japan, without whom the whole pact could collapse.

Russia, which exerted tremendous pressure during the conference, was granted all the “carbon wells” it requested, that is, 33 million tons, which is double the package (17.6 million tons) it obtained during the Bonn conference held last July.

The so-called “wells” or carbon emission credits which industrial polluters can buy from countries with low pollution levels, are a mere pretext to foil genuine efforts geared towards the reduction of gas emissions, said the ACM.

Japan’s backing for the Protocol was secured. “We will have our cabinet decide on this after I get back but I feel personally we have a very good package,” Japanese environment minister Yoriko Kawaguchi, said.

Scientists who attended the Marrakesh conference joined environmentalists in their skepticism over the impact of the Protocol in curbing gas emissions.

The gas emission cuts provided for in the Protocol will not be enough to stabilize the climate, the scientists deplored.

According to a scientific document circulated during the conference, the Kyoto Protocol, if strictly implemented, would help reduce by year 2012 the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from 384 ppm (the unit to measure greenhouse effect gases) to 382 ppm.

“The amount of carbon to be reduced is a only a drop in a sea,” Dr. Mohamed Bouhind, an expert from the Moroccan center of nuclear studies (CNESTEN) based in Rabat told IPS.

For Dr. Marc Darras, an expert of the World Gas Union, the Kyoto Protocol was “only a starting point. It cannot be considered the end of the tunnel”.

“For it to succeed in the long run, the Protocol has to be modified to encompass all countries of the world, including the grand defector, USA,” he added.

Despite its rejection of the Protocol, Washington sent a delegation of observers to Marrakesh. The US delegation was closely involved in drafting a document to be sent from Marrakesh to the World summit on Sustainable Development, to be held next September in Johannesburg, South Africa.

The Delegation wanted to restrict references to climate change issues and ensure that the focus be on social, economic and other environmental issues rather than on gas emissions.

Shell called negligent in Brazil toxic waste case

By Sharon Cohen

Sao Paulo, Brazil, Nov. 8— The Public Ministry of the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo says a subsidiary of Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch/Shell was negligent in the exposure of at least 156 people to toxic pesticides.

According to a report due to be released next week and which sources close to the case made available to Reuters on Thursday, the ministry found that Shell-Quimica had not only contaminated residents of a rural town in Sao Paulo state but that there had been “negligence, ineptitude and recklessness by the company’s industrial leaders.”

Shell officials reached by Reuters on Thursday dismissed the report as baseless.

Last month, the state’s health watchdog said it supported a study by the town of Paulinia that found that 156 of 181 residents living near a factory owned by Shell-Quimica had “unacceptable” levels of at least one metal or pesticide in their bloodstream. Fifty-nine people suffered from thyroid or liver tumors.

The ministry, which functions like a US state’s attorney, based its findings on visits to Paulinia and documents from the mayor’s office and the Sao Paulo state environmental agency.

It said residents near Shell-Quimica’s plant had been exposed to “chronic pollution, produced by Shell, since the 1970s through the air and then water in the neighborhood.”

Shell has repeatedly rejected the charges and accused Paulinia of using low benchmarks to measure contamination compared with those recommended by the World Health Organization. It acknowledged in 1994, however, that it had polluted the soil and ground water at the pesticide plant and promised to decontaminate the site.

It has since provided drinking water, social counseling and medical exams for residents. But it denies that the contamination affected residents and is buying the property around the plant to avoid alarming residents.

Maria Lucia Braz Pinheiro, vice president of Shell-Quimica for Latin America, told Reuters she received the report Tuesday and described it as “another report with technical inconsistencies and lacking a scientific base.”

Shell owned the factory between 1974 and 1995 but stopped producing Aldrin,Dieldrin and Endrin pesticides in 1990, when Brazil banned them. They are among the 12 persistent organic pollutants, dubbed the “dirty dozen,” that remain in the environment for over 100 years without breaking down and accumulate in the food chain.

Source: Reuters