#15 - JRL 7277
St. Petersburg Times
August 5, 2003
Russia Still Hesitant on Ratifying Kyoto
By Greg Walters
SPECIAL TO THE ST. PETERSBURG TIMES
The Soviet Union and its successor states have never been renowned as great champions of environmental causes. However, an ironic twist of history means that the fate of the Kyoto protocol, the highest profile attempt to date to safeguard the future of the world's environment, now rests squarely on Russia's shoulders.
In simple terms, if Russia ratifies the Kyoto Protocol, it comes into force. If not, the protocol dies.
The protocol aims to control atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases, which many scientists say are the root cause of global warming, by making countries responsible for their emissions. To come into force, the protocol must be domestically ratified by 55 or more of the countries that signed it and that, collectively, produced 55 percent of the world's total greenhouse-gas emissions in 1990.
Despite signing the protocol on Nov. 12, 1998, the United States, which produced 36 percent of 1990 emissions, declared in 2001 that it would not ratify it, claiming that reducing greenhouse-gas emissions would hurt its economy. With the next-highest 1990 emissions, at 17 percent, Russia therefore became the de facto arbiter of the protocol's fate after the U.S. withdrawal.
At least publically, Russian officials have appeared enthusiastic about ratifying the protocol, adopted on Dec. 11, 1997, at a meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan. Russia signed on March 11, 1999.
In September 2002, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov told the BBC that "we consider that ratification will take place in the very near future."
Almost a year later, there is little sign - if any - of progress. So what is causing the delay?
"It's a rather serious document," Oleg Pluzhnikov, deputy head of the Energy Ministry's Ecological Department, said in an interview on Friday.
"Nothing [about the protocol] has been obvious from the very beginning."
Pluzhnikov suggested that the hold-up has been caused by bureaucratic thoroughness - but that this thoroughness has yielded "very positive results."
"We believe that ratification can still happen in the near future," Pluzhnikov said, although he declined to be more specific.
To many observers, Russia's reticence to ratify the Kyoto Protocol is all the more puzzling given that the country stands to benefit from an economic windfall if the protocol comes into force.
According to the terms of the protocol, countries that now produce lower greenhouse-gas emissions than in 1990 can sell their "surplus" - the difference between 1990 emissions and the current level - to overproducing countries to bump up those countries' emissions limits.
Russia currently pumps some 30 percent less greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the Soviet Union was in 1990, meaning the Kyoto Protocol effectively provides the country with an instant international commodity - if it ratifies the treaty.
A "pessimistic" estimate by Natalya Olefirenko of the Moscow office of environmental pressure group Greenpeace put Russia's potential earnings from quota selling at at least $20 billion. Pluzhnikov, however, said between $1 billion and $2 billion is more realistic.
Some critics say Russian authorities are stalling in hopes of getting an even better deal.
"Both President Vladimir Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov promised ratification, but appear to be taking their time, evidently wishing to gain some further advantages," Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, director of the Russian Academy of Sciences' Institute of Water Problems, wrote in an article for RIA Novosti on July 22.
The advantages could include a guarantee that countries seeking credits will purchase from Russia before other countries with a surplus, or would provide Russia with "clean" technology to help keep its emissions low.
However, Igor Leshukov, director of the Institute for International Affairs, St. Petersburg, said Russia is unlikely to get further concessions.
"Russia already got the maximum," he said in a telephone interview on Wednesday. "I can hardly imagine what type of better deal you could get."
According to Leshukov, the problem is the nature of the bargain to be struck, rather than its terms.
"In any country, politics is about money, but normally it's about real money," he said. "Russia does not consider this money [from quota trading] substantial or real. It's more or less virtual."
Leshukov also said that Russia may be only partially to blame, and that the European Union may be less enthusiastic about the Kyoto Protocol than it appears.
"Kyoto is suspisciously lacking from the EU-Russia energy dialogue," he said, noting that, when Putin and British Prime Minister Tony Blair met for talks in June, Kyoto was conspicuously absent from the agenda.
"This means that the EU doesn't consider Kyoto a priority, contradictory to its official declarations. Otherwise it would press Russia harder," Leshukov said.
Like any drawn-out political question in Russia, however, there is also at least one conspiracy theory - in this case, the American connection.
The argument goes that, should the protocol come into force, the United States could face pressure as the lone industrialized foot-dragger. Therefore, it has a key interest in blocking the protocol, and may be maneuvering behind the scenes to stop Russian ratification.
"It's entirely possible," said an American environmental policy expert, who asked that her name be witheld. "And anything that they might be doing would definitely be done below the radar. I'm sure they wouldn't want to be seen as pressuring Russia."
Both U.S. and Russian officials denied the allegation.
"We think nations should independently evaluate whether ratification of the Kyoto Protocol is in their national interest," a U.S. State Department official was quoted as saying in an article in the Wall Street Journal on July 16.
"As far as I know, there is no [U.S.] pressure," the Energy Ministry's Pluzhnikov said.
For Leshukov, though, these three factors would be enough to explain the delay. "Insufficient interest in Europe, lack of interest on the side of Russia, and some maneuvers on the side of the United States" spell immobility for the protocol, he said.
Greenpeace's Olefirenko, however, laid the blame firmly on Minister for Economic Development and Trade German Gref. According to Olefirenko, the requisite documents have been ready for a year, but Gref is deliberately holding them up.
"The Russian Ministries and governmental agencies headed by the Ministry of Economic Development either have showed their inability to prepare a minimum set of papers required for ratification, or have been deliberately sabotaging the process," she wrote in an email last week. "In any other country, such a situation would have triggered a thorough investigation, because corruption can be the only thing standing behind these delays."
Whatever the reason for the delay, ratification may, in fact, be just a matter of time. The first piece of the puzzle, wrote Danilov-Danilyan of the Russian Academy of Sciences, is realizing that "nothing is done quickly in Russia."
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