Russia, which is responsible for 17% of global GHG emissions, says it will not ratify in its present form the Kyoto Protocol designed to reduce global warming because it "places significant limitations on the economic growth of Russia" according to presidential aide Andrei Illarionov. The protocol cannot now enter into legal force, especially since the US has also rejected it, and will either have to be renegotiated or the nations that have signed will have to go it alone.
The Russian decision came in December while signatories to the United Nations Climate Change Convention were meeting in Milan. But the UN has not given up yet. Michael Williams, a spokesman for the UN Framework Convention, said he hoped the Russians could still be won round.
"Russia has over the last few months sent mixed signals but [President Vladimir] Putin didn't rule out ratification last September," he told the AFP news agency. "We remain optimistic that Russia will indeed ratify." President Putin had said in September said he wanted more from Kyoto.
The protocol enters into force when industrialised countries responsible for 55% of the developed world's 1990 CO2 emissions have signed it, and despite its rejection by the US - which some say has already condemned the protocol to irrelevance - enough other countries have done so for it to have taken effect if Russia had decided to ratify.
The protocol's supporters question Mr Illarionov's view that ratifying Kyoto would harm Russia's economic prospects. Emissions reduction targets were first set in 1990, when the Soviet Union's heavy industries were still creating huge amounts of pollution. Russia no longer has those industries, and therefore has considerable unused emissions entitlements which it has the right, under the protocol, to sell to industrialised countries that are close to exceeding their own allowances. This could be a very lucrative trade.
The EU, despite being on course to miss its own targetes, is hopeful that the Russians will still sign, mainly because of Putin's phrase "in its present form". But a British independent think-tank, the New Economics Foundation, says that countries like the USA and Russia which are refusing to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases should face trade sanctions, because they will enjoy a competitive advantage as energy costs increase. It wants the EU to tax imports from these countries. A Foundation spokesman said EU countries would be within their rights to "work out the cost of the free ride America is getting" and raise that amount. "We are about half a century away from being ecologically and economically bankrupt because of global warming" he said. The British diplomat who proposed environmental sanctions 20 years ago, Sir Crispin Tickell, commented that the USA's refusal to sign the United Nations Climate Change Convention was the "height of irresponsibility".
Kyoto signatories will, sometime between 2008 and 2012, have to cut their emissions to 5.2% below their 1990 levels. But many scientists say cuts of around 60-70% will be needed by mid-century to avoid runaway climate change.
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