Buenos Aires Post-Mortum
by Christopher Flavin

ARGENTINA - Climate negotiators in Buenos Aires kept the Kyoto Protocol alive - but just barely - in two weeks of contentious deliberations that ended last November.

The Buenos Aires "tango" began with tough speeches, and devolved into "hostage taking" of key paragraphs by governments intent on shifting the burden of solving the climate problem onto others.

A deepening North-South split was only papered over by the decisions of Argentina and Kazakhstan to accept voluntary limits on their emissions - a move that was viewed with deep suspicion by other developing nations. The world's two superpowers, the US and China, are now locked in a struggle over climate policy that at times seems to rival the bitterness of the Cold War.

The main achievement in Buenos Aires was to develop an "action plan" for finishing the Kyoto Protocol by the end of the year 2000. This means that, even in the best of circumstances, the Protocol will be ready for ratification three years behind schedule. If the Protocol is not ratified soon, it may be too late to meet the promised goals, which kick-in beginning in 2008.

The good news in Buenos Aires was found largely outside the main plenary hall, where companies and citizens' groups announced major steps to develop environmentally friendly technologies and reduce emissions.

Daimler Benz displayed a prototype fuel-cell car, that will reach the market in five years. The wind power industry - which is growing faster than any other energy sector - announced a strategy for pulling 10 percent of the world's electricity out of thin air.

While fossil fuel lobbyists labored to derail the negotiations, some business executives were busy seeking profits in low-carbon technologies.

Perhaps the biggest success of the Kyoto Protocol has been that it has spurred hundreds of companies to take climate change seriously.

One of the challenges facing climate negotiators is to move the process fast enough to hold the interest of companies in developing solutions to the climate problem. Businesses are particularly interested in the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a new fund included in the Protocol that could help finance climate-related projects in developing countries. Unfortunately, the Washington has held up work on rules for the CDM, which the US views as a bargaining chip to be win concessions from developing countries.

It was clear in Buenos Aires that the climate negotiating process is now running on fumes. The scale of the climate problem and the complicated politics involved have led negotiators to create a Protocol of unprecedented complexity - a complexity that may defy efforts to finalize the agreement and get it ready for ratification.

Unless political leaders can abandon business-as-usual politics and create a sunnier climate for negotiations, the treaty process could at some point become more a drag than a spur to efforts to change government policies and corporate practices.

Buenos Aires did not produce the "good air" that its name implies . It is time for much closer North-South cooperation, including more generous support for new energy technologies in developing countries.

NGOs and governments who do not believe that negotiations are moving fast enough should consider mounting a new Leadership Initiative like the one that resulted in an international landmines convention last year. Leadership in the climate arena can be defined in terms of early ratification of the Kyoto Protocol, commitments to domestic action before the Protocol goes into force, and an accelerated transition away from fossil fuels. Citizen activists must move beyond the accounting gamesmanship of debating greenhouse numbers and to actually get to work changing policies to push the rest of the world in the direction of an energy economy that is viable for the 21st century.

Christopher Flavin is Senior Vice President of the Worldwatch Institute [(202) 452-1992, cflavin@worldwatch.org]. For more information: Atmosphere Alliance [2103 Harrison Ave NW, #2615 Olympia, WA 98502, (360) 352-1763, atmosphere@olywa.net].