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Article Excerpt
By: Colby Cosh

OH, THOSE RUSSIANS

Whatever else happened to the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse-gas emissions--signed in 1997 but still not in force--the Russian Federation was supposed to be securely on board. And a good thing, too, for Kyoto advocates. Emissions in 1990 provide the baseline for the reductions demanded in the treaty. Back then, Russia was still running a heavily industrialized (and heavily inefficient) command economy. Because its greenhouse output has declined so drastically since, Russia was supposed to provide cheap emissions credits for other Kyoto signatories, while at the same time helping the treaty towards the next required threshold: according to the protocol's text, it must be ratified by countries responsible for 55% of the industrialized world's 1990 emissions. When the U.S. and Australia backed out, the 55% barrier could still be broken--as long as Russia was willing to hop on the wagon and enjoy the emissions-credit bonanza.

But Russia has dragged its feet, and now the survival of the protocol is threatened outright. The North American press has been slow to pick up the story, but the Japan Times reported May 8 that Mukhamed Tsikanov, the federation's vice-minister of economic development and trade, declared that "It is unlikely that Russia will ratify the protocol within this year." A week earlier, European Union president Romano Prodi of Italy had spoken gloomily about the treaty's prospects. "We must keep up the momentum for ratification," he told reporters at a press conference in Japan. "Joint efforts must be taken in this direction...the momentum is losing steam." Privately, senior European Union (EU) officials told Agence France-Presse (May 2) that the European superstate is "very worried" about the future of the treaty, which has a 2008 deadline.

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