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Governments from 130 countries last week failed to agree on ways to
prevent the disaster of global warming. Many nations refused to approve
the final declaration of the World Climate Conference in Geneva, which recommended
no firm targets for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Targets were
kept out of the statement by industrialised nations fearful of alienating
the US before negotiations begin for a world climate convention.

The conference produced a statement of scientific consensus on world
climate change, followed by a ministerial statement of what should be done.
The scientific statement was the strongest confirmation yet of the likelihood
of climate change, and the availability of ways to prevent it (see This
Week, 10 November). But the ministers did not reach the same conclusion.
They fell out chiefly over a phrase which originally called on industrialised
nations to agree on targets to freeze or cut emissions of greenhouse gases
in the next decade.

Oil-producing nations, led by the US, the Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia,
opposed any such targets. The final statement said only that ‘we urge all
developed countries to establish targets and/or feasible national programmes
or strategies which will have significant effects on limiting emissions
of greenhouse gases not controlled by the Montreal Protocol’.

The US would not call for a freeze on emissions unless it included greenhouse
gases other than carbon dioxide, such as methane and CFCs, which are to
be phased out in any case under the Montreal Protocol. A senior American
scientist at the meeting could not say what would constitute ‘significant
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The final statement seemed designed to keep the US involved in negotiations
for a climate treaty which are due to start in Washington next February.
The EC had wanted the statement to call for a freeze on emissions of CO₂
at 1990 levels by 2000, a target it has agreed itself. But Brice Lalonde,
Klaus Topfer and Chris Patten, respectively the French, German and British
environment ministers, and Carlo Ripa di Meana, the European Commissioner
for the environment, all said in Geneva that an agreed statement with no
targets was preferable to a dispute over targets that would alienate the
US. ‘It is not good to isolate them (the US) now,’ said Lalonde. ‘What we
want is a commitment to negotiate.’

The reluctance to offend the US did not extend to some developing countries.
In the final moments of the meeting, Lincoln Myers, environment minister
for Trinidad and Tobago, objected to the statement’s lack of any call for
specific action, and asked to reopen negotiations. He relented ‘so we can
go home’, but was joined by some 15 developing countries, and Austria, in
objecting to the ministerial declaration.

The developing countries did not desert the ministerial conference outright,
partly because of what appeared to be a major concession from the US on
extra aid for dealing with climate. Thomas Vakatora, Fiji’s minister for
urban development, said: ‘The conference statement did not go far enough.
But the islands need the transfer of technology, and financial assistance.’
The ministerial statement ‘recommends .. adequate and additional financial
resources’, and ‘best available environmentally sound technologies’ transferred
to developing countries ‘on a most favourable basis’.

John Knauss, the head of the American delegation, said the US would
not establish targets for reducing greenhouse gases, and doubted that those
who had set targets could achieve them. ‘We wonder about idealistically
set targets,’ said Knauss. When asked about the study on which the German
cabinet based its decision this week to cut Co2 emissions by 25 to 30 per
cent by 2005, Knauss said: ‘I am sure it was very thorough if it was German’,
and admitted ‘we have not done that level of study’.