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Under the protocol, industrialised countries pledged to reduce their emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels. With the US out of the process, it is no longer possible to meet this average reduction target.
The bargaining power of key countries, like Japan, Russia and Canada, has increased. This enabled countries to obtain important concessions at CoP-7, further reducing the environmental effectiveness of the protocol. For instance, Russia got away with an extra amount of credits for forest management activities at Marrakech. So, cheaper ‘hot air’There is a higher amount of ‘hot air’ available with the US exit, bringing down the price of greenhouse gas (GHG) permits. The RIVM study says that the US re-entry can potentially raise the post-Marrakech price of international permits from US $9 per tonne of carbon (US $2.4 per tonne of carbon dioxide) to US $30 per tonne of carbon (US $8 per tonne of carbon dioxide). Another study by Bjart Holtsmark and Cathrine Hagem projects similar figures. It says that international permit prices will fall by about one-third of what it would have been if the US were in the loop (US $15 per tonne of carbon dioxide). A lower price means industrialised countries can meet a large part of their commitments by buying cheap ‘hot air’, thus reducing the cost of complying to the protocol. But since permits from international emission trading can be banked for future use, the price may not dip very low and the cost of mitigation may not decrease by a great extent. So, no money for green R&DAccording to Barbara Buchner, Carlo Carraro and Igor Cersosimo, the US withdrawal will have a negative effect on research and development (R&D) undertaken in industrialised countries, especially in the US itself. They predict that by 2010, R&D in the US will decrease by 9.7 per cent, because the US is no longer under pressure to meet the Kyoto obligations and reduce its emissions. Investment in R&D will, in fact, continue to decline over the years due to a lack of incentive. The US accounted for 36 per cent of industrialised countries’ carbon dioxide emissions in 1990, and was to cut its GHG emissions by 7 per cent below 1990 levels. If it had complied with the protocol, it would have had to reduce its emissions by 25–30 per cent in 2010 compared to a business-as-usual scenario. Now, not only will there be no substantial drop in emission levels, the demand for emission permits in the international market is also bound to drop sharply.
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Copyright © CSE Centre for Science and Environment
According to the
National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection (RIVM), the Netherlands,
if the Marrakech Accords are implemented without the US, the carbon dioxide equivalent
emissions of industrialised countries in 2010 will actually increase by 1.7 per cent
compared to 1990 levels. This calculation includes emission reductions through domestic
policies, emission trading, joint implementation and clean development mechanism; sinks
are not considered an abatement effort. With the US out of the process, even if sinks are
included, emission reduction in industrialised countries is 3.6 per cent below 1990
levels.