Climate Conference to seek to agree on greenhouse emissions cuts.

COPENHAGEN, December 7 (Itar-Tass) -- The 15th Conference of the
Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the 5th
Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol will open in the Danish
capital on Monday.

About 15,000 people - official representatives, experts and
journalists - from 192 UN member-countries arrived for the forum. The
heads of state and government from over 100 countries will participate in
the final stage of the forum on December 17-18. The participants will
attempt at coming to a new international agreement on greenhouse gas
emissions cuts instead of the Kyoto Protocol, which will expire in 2012.
According to scientific reports, these greenhouse gas emissions, which
are caused by the burning of coal, oil and gas, are the major reason for
climate change. The scientists affirm that in order to prevent such
devastating climate change disasters as droughts, floods and hurricanes it
is necessary to keep the temperature from rising by more than 2 degrees
Celsius. This will require a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by
25-40% by 2020 and by 50% by 2050, with 1990 being the starting point.
Meanwhile, during the preliminary negotiations the Kyoto Protocol
parties failed to agree on the scale of emissions cuts and on the
assistance to developing countries for the climate change struggle. No
country is willing to put at stake the economic development for the sake
of some ecological goals; moreover, developing countries are inclined to
shoulder 'historic responsibility' for the global warning on highly
industrialized countries.
"The Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen is a really historical
stage in the negotiating process," the chief of the department of global
environmental problems in the department of international organizations of
the Russian Foreign Ministry, Oleg Shamanov, who was the first member of
the Russian delegation to arrive in the Danish capital, told Itar-Tass.
"It was planned that a new international legal document, which should
replace the Kyoto Protocol, will have been drafted by the Conference.
However, the positions of the negotiating nations are so opposite that the
text of the document had not been coordinated at all," Shamanov said.
"Therefore, we believe the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference should
make a political breakthrough. For this purpose at the initiative of the
Danish side a summit will be held at the final stage of the Conference in
order to find solutions on the key problems with the assistance of the
heads of state and government. We hope that the political will be
demonstrated and we will succeed to agree on political decisions in
Copenhagen," Shamanov said.
As for the concrete volumes of greenhouse gas emissions cuts, the
Russian diplomat believes that "it is useless to speak about some figures,
until we formulate a common architecture of a future regime." "Currently
with due account of the lessons of the Kyoto Protocol it is important for
us to decide how we will be able to cooperate efficiently and on the
global scale in order to take some measures to curb global climate
changes," Shamanov remarked. "We are convinced that to make this regime
efficient it should be universal, should embrace all spheres and thematic
blocks and should be all-embracing in terms of its participants. In other
words, the regime should embrace all countries, including the major
emitters (of greenhouse gases) among developed and developing countries,"
the Russian diplomat said. "If these questions are settled, then it will
be possible to say that we have some prospects for the future," Shamanov
said.
-0-baz