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Negotiators from the US got their way last week, successfully preventing
the inclusion of any binding commitments to limit emissions of carbon dioxide
in the framework Climate Convention agreed in New York on Friday. This week,
in Nairobi, they begin a similar effort to weaken the parallel Biodiversity
Convention. Both conventions are due to be signed at the Earth Summit in
Rio de Janeiro next month.

European environment commissioner, Carlo Ripa di Meana, damned the watered-down
climate agreement as ‘completely unacceptable’. During a visit to New York
last week, as the deal was being concluded, he said ‘vague pledges are not
suitable material for conventions’. He called on European governments to
‘resist such a sellout’, warning that it could spark a major confrontation
between the Third World and industrialised nations at the Earth Summit.

Following the conclusion of the climate talks, the White House revealed
that President Bush would probably now join more than 100 other world leaders
and attend the summit.

Early drafts of the climate convention had included a specific commitment
by developed countries to stabilise carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels
by the end of the decade, and thereafter to make reductions. Last week’s
agreed wording simply exhorts signatories to adopt national policies to
‘limit emissions’ in ways that ‘demonstrate that developed countries are
taking the lead in modifying long-term trends in emissions’.

The convoluted wording goes on to ‘recognise that the return by the
end of the present decade to earlier levels of emissions would contribute
to such modification’.

But it then ‘recognises’ that in drawing up their policies, nations
can ‘take into account’ such matters as ‘the differences in the parties’
starting points and approaches, the need to maintain strong and sustainable
economic growth, and other individual circumstances’.

The one firm commitment made by governments that sign up to the convention
will be to submit ‘detailed information on policies and measures as well
as on resulting projected emissions . . . with the aim of returning individually
or jointly to their 1990 levels’. The first reports will be required within
six months of the convention coming into force, which could be later this
year.

A statement last week by the Climate Action Network, which is supported
by the World Wide Fund for Nature and the US-based Environmental Defense
Fund, said: ‘The first US action plan will reveal whether the US has been
advocating this approach out of genuine belief that it will work, or just
as a cover to justify minimal action.’ The convention gives industrial nations
the option of meeting their targets by planting trees in other countries
to soak up their carbon dioxide, rather than by stabilising emissions. Several
multi-national companies, including Shell in Britain, have made the case
for planting forests in the tropics as ‘carbon sinks’ for industrial pollution.

The convention encourages this approach by giving equal recognition
to limiting emissions and ‘protecting and enhancing greenhouse gas sinks
and reservoirs’, and by stating that parties to the convention may implement
their measures ‘jointly with others’.

In the hours after the agreement, Malaysia, representing the Group of
77 developing nations, described the convention as ‘fundamentally flawed’.
During negotiations, several Third World nations warned that if industrialised
countries would not agree to targets for carbon dioxide emissions, they
would oppose specific commitments for conservation in the Biodiversity Convention.

Meanwhile, a memo leaked from the office of the US Vice-President last
week reveals that the administration has ‘very serious problems’ with the
draft Biodiversity Convention, due to be approved in meetings this week
and next in Nairobi. The memo suggests that it may not be possible to reach
agreement on the convention in time for Rio.

It mentions two main obstacles to a US signature. The first is the discovery
that it will require changes to US law, notably to the Endangered Species
Act. The second is its proposed regulations for the control of releases
of genetically altered organisms into the environment, which the memo declares
to be ‘totally unacceptable’ and a restriction on trade in new products.