BUENOS AIRES - The Kyoto protocol to cut greenhouse gases goes into effect two months from Thursday and industrialized countries like Canada and Japan find themselves with emissions embarrassingly beyond their agreed targets for 2012.
Canada leads the laggards with emissions growth at 20 percent from 1990 although it has committed to a 6 percent reduction by 2012.
Japan's emissions are up 12 percent and it has to cut them also by six, while New Zealand must show zero growth and is currently up 21 percent.
The European Union as a whole is doing better, with a 2.9 percent fall toward a 2012 target of minus 8 percent. But there are problems, for example, in Italy, which is 8 percent higher and must go 8 percent lower.
The U.N.-backed Kyoto deal aims to reduce the six major heat-trapping gases including carbon dioxide by 5 percent, a first small step in the fight against global warming.
Russia's decision in September to ratify Kyoto, allowing the treaty to go into force with a seven-year delay, might have caught countries by surprise as they expected a more protracted battle.
But negotiators and activists on the sidelines of this week's U.N. conference on climate change -- the first with Kyoto ready to go -- say Kyoto's compliance rules are going to work.
Penalties for noncompliance are not in terms of money, but rather deeper emissions reductions after 2012.
"You have to deliver your cuts at some time," said Stephan Singer, who tracks European policy for environmental group WWF. "But of course there is no green army coming in and forcing you to do it ... that's the U.N. in the end."
The EU, the driving force behind the fight against global warming, will benefit from its emissions trading system that goes into effect on Jan. 1. Less polluting nations and industries can sell carbon credits to the more polluting ones.
EU Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas said he had no doubt that "the EU will be able to meet its Kyoto targets, provided we sustain our efforts."
But Canada cannot say the same. "Is it absolutely certain we will get to Kyoto? No, it is not absolutely certain," Alex Manson, director of Canada's Climate Change Bureau, told Reuters.
He said Canada picked up the pace against emissions in 2003, but it has been hurt by the fact that its biggest trading partner -- the United States -- withdrew from Kyoto in 2001. U.S. emissions are 12 percent up since 1990.
"It does affect some of the measures you can take in some sectors. It didn't make our problem any easier," Manson said.
Story by Mary Milliken
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
