South Africa Strongly Opposed to Watered Down Kyoto
Date: 21-Oct-05
Country: SOUTH AFRICA
"In Montreal next month, South Africa will do all it can to oppose any weakening of the Kyoto targets and timeframes," Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister Sue van der Merwe said in prepared remarks at the close of a climate change conference.
She also said South Africa would "support measures to introduce more stringent commitments for developed countries during the second commitment period."
Under the Kyoto Protocol most developed nations have agreed to cut their emissions of heat-trapping gases by 5.2 percent from 1990 levels by 2008-12.
A UN conference in Montreal in late November and early December will begin discussions on the post-2012 steps.
President George Bush pulled the United States out of Kyoto in 2001, saying it was too expensive and wrongly excluded developing nations from the first round of caps.
Van Der Merwe said South Africa planned to support calls for the United States and Australia to sign up to the pact.
"Part of our task will be to ensure that any future commitments for developing countries support our development objectives," she said.
South African Environment Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk told Reuters on Tuesday that it was too soon to set targets for the developing world to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions linked by most scientists to climate change.
South Africa is by far the continent's biggest economy and the main consumer of heat-trapping fossil fuels.
Poor countries argue that it is too early in their development to curtail their GHG emissions, which the rich world pumped out as it industrialised -- and continues to pump out.
Van Der Merwe said South Africa believed that "dramatic and deeper cuts in global emissions of GHGs" were needed.
UN studies say a build-up of greenhouse gases, mostly from the burning of fossil fuels, is likely to cause more storms, floods and desertification and could raise sea levels by up to 1 metre by 2100.
