Set example to the world, the EU is told

By Emily Smith

Date: 24/11/05

Mahi Sideridou, who has spent the past five years working on climate change for environmental group Greenpeace, hopes to see tangible results from the Montreal climate change meetings, not just talks about starting talks.

Above all, she said, an end date for agreeing post-2012 action must be set in stone. "It took eight years for the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force - no one expected that. If we don't see at least a date agreed in Montreal we'll end up losing yet more time," she said.

A date, she admitted, might not seem a lot to show for two weeks of talks "but the political reality is that we can't expect much more".

In Montreal the US should also be made to define its role in the fight against climate change, says Sideridou. But its failure to back the Kyoto Protocol should not be used by the EU as an excuse not to do everything possible to cut its own CO2 emissions. "Waiting for the US is like waiting for Godot. It is not an option. The US is more likely to take action if others set an example."

In particular, she said UK Environment Minister Margaret Beckett's recent comment to the European Parliament that "the age of imperialism is over" and the EU should not impose its climate change opinions on the rest of the world, could lead to a dangerous state of inaction.

"Everyone else has an opinion - the US has an opinion, Mali has an opinion, why should Europe be nice and fluffy and just listen? At the end of the day this is a negotiation, the EU needs to make clear its own position."

It is vital, added Sideridou, that post-2012 climate change targets be agreed under the Kyoto Protocol, despite recent signs from countries such as the UK that they would favour a more technology-based future deal. "Kyoto is definitely the best way forward. There has to be a second commitment under Kyoto, not a new protocol."

Though Kyoto is not as ambitious as it could be, she explained, aspects such as the emissionsreduction targets and the market-based flexible mechanisms - for example CO2 emissions trading - should be essential elements of future climate change agreements.

Above all, said Sideridou, the EU has to follow through on the "significant steps" taken recently by national governments to agree overall long-term CO2 reduction targets. It is "remarkable", she said, that EU leaders in March agreed that global temperatures should not be allowed to rise to more than 2ûC above pre-industrial levels. Montreal could be a first chance for them to get the rest of the world on their side.

Interview with Greenpeace's Mahi Sideridou on the prospects of the climate change conference in Montreal, November-December 2005.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change: United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 11 and COP/MOP 1) http://unfccc.int/meetings/cop_11/items/3394.php

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