Europe aims for transport emissions agreement

British and other European negotiators will reportedly be pushing for shipping and aviation emissions to be included in a post-Kyoto deal on climate change at discussions beginning in Bali. Representatives from almost 190 countries are gathering for the United Nations climate conference in Bali this week to begin hammering out a successor to the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, which expires in 2012.

It is hoped the meeting will make significant progress on a framework and timetables for a new global treaty. Action on greenhouse gas emissions from international travel and trade is among eight points that British and European negotiators intend to pursue at the meeting. “The high levels of pollution from air and sea traffic needs to be included in a new global agreement,” Denmark’s climate minister, Connie Hedegaard, was cited saying in Danish press today.

Carbon emissions from aviation and shipping have to date gone unregulated in international agreements, but it is feared that growth in both sectors could cancel out carbon savings achieved elsewhere. Only last week, a UN report said the Climate Change Bill announced in November by UK prime minister Gordon Brown does not go far enough to prevent potentially catastrophic global warming. The UN report said Brown’s proposed bill had set the UK’s CO2 reduction target too low, and also criticised it for omitting shipping and aviation from the country’s carbon emissions target.

Officials say getting a global agreement on regulating carbon emissions from shipping and aviation could be difficult. Work is underway at the IMO to address greenhouse gas emissions from ships. The IMO and its aviation equivalent, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), came under fire last month from European Commission Vice President Margot Wallstrom for not doing enough to fight climate change.

The talks in Bali are considered crucial in ensuring that a post-Kyoto agreement can be reached, but there are concerns about the role of the United States, which refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Without US support, observers say it could be difficult to get large developing countries such as China and India to agree to a new global treaty on climate change.