Greenhouse-Gas Emissions Drop 0.1% in Developed World, UN Says

By Alex Morales

Nov. 17 (Bloomberg) -- Greenhouse-gas emissions declined 0.1 percent during 2006 in industrialized nations, the United Nations said, showing that many of the world's biggest polluters are making slow progress in fighting global warming.

Germany, Japan and 18 other nations that signed the 1997 Kyoto Protocol treaty that limits emissions aren't yet on target to meet their obligations of limiting output of carbon dioxide and other global-warming gases, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change said today in a survey of 2006, the most recent year for which worldwide air-pollution statistics are given.

In two weeks, the organization's 192 members meet in Poznan, Poland, to resume efforts to devise a successor treaty to Kyoto, which expires in 2012. Evidence that emissions this decade are on a rising trend after falling in the 1990s shows more work is needed, UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer said.

``The figures clearly underscore the urgency for the UN negotiating process to make good progress in Poznan and move forward quickly in designing a new agreement to respond to the challenge of climate change,'' de Boer said today in an e-mailed statement.

Emissions of all developed countries including the U.S., which isn't bound by Kyoto, fell 4.7 percent since 1990, the base year for the treaty, or by 17 percent for Kyoto signatories. This was largely because of the economic collapse of Russia, the Ukraine and other eastern European countries in the 1990s, following the breakup of the Soviet Union, the UN said.

Since 2000 output from developed countries including the U.S. rose 2.3 percent.

$46 Billion

Data isn't available for three countries that ratified Kyoto, and 16 are on track to attain their goals. Nations that fail to make the necessary cuts will have to buy 2.3 billion permits, one for every excess ton of greenhouse gases, through 2012, New Carbon Finance, a research firm in London, has estimated. At current permit prices, that would cost about 36 billion euros ($46 billion).

Kyoto, brokered in 1997, sets an overall target for developed countries to trim emissions by 5 percent for the average of the five years from 2008 to 2012, compared with 1990 levels. Each nation was assigned a target, and the then-15 members of the European Union devised their own goals to share the burden. The targets range from Luxembourg, required to make a 28 percent cut, to Portugal, allowed to raise output 27 percent.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alex Morales in London at amorales2@bloomberg.net.