World on track to meet Kyoto targets, says UN climate chief

The world is on track to meet its greenhouse gas targets under the Kyoto protocol, according to UN figures released today.

Emissions by the 40 industrialised nations that agreed binding cuts in pollution are down 5% on 1990 levels — the target set under Kyoto. But the drop has little to do with climate policies: the bulk of the decline is down to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the subsequent economic decline in eastern European countries in the 1990s. Without these nations, with so-called "economies in transition", greenhouse gas emissions have grown by almost 10% since 1990, the figures show.

The UN released the data ahead of a key meeting of environment ministers to discuss climate change in Poznan, Poland, next month.

Yvo de Boer, executive secretary of the UN climate secretariat, said the figures showed emissions have risen sharply since the turn of the century.

"The biggest recent increase in emissions of industrialised countries has come from economies in transition, which have seen a rise of 7.4% in greenhouse-gas emissions within the 2000 to 2006 time frame," he said. "The figures clearly underscore the urgency for the UN negotiating process to make good progress in Poznan and move forward quickly in designing a new agreement to respond to the challenge of climate change."

Among industrialised countries, 16 are on target to meet their Kyoto obligations including France, the UK, Greece and Hungary, the UN said. Some 20 countries are lagging, including Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Spain.

Nations that miss their Kyoto target in 2012 will have a penalty of an extra 33% added to whatever cut they agree under a new treaty, de Boer said.

Emissions reported under Kyoto do not include pollution from aviation and shipping, as these are classed as international activities not attributable to countries.