BONN, October 1999 - Greenpeace described German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's unexpected call to have the Kyoto Protocol to combat climate change ratified by the year 2002 as a step forward for the international climate negotiations but questioned Germany's own timetable for ratification and its commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.
Schroeder called for a ratification deadline at a speech given today at the opening of the climate summit in Bonn. "Germany must both ratify the Kyoto protocol soon and implement it," said Greenpeace International's political director Bill Hare. "Unfortunately there is little evidence of the German government's commitment to meet its legal obligations under the protocol to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 21 per cent by 2010," said Hare. Last week Greenpeace presented a study by the Wuppertal Institute which showed that Germany will not reach this goal if current traffic growth continues.
"Climate change is here now - temperatures are increasing, the Arctic is melting and sea levels are rising - but there is a disturbing lack of urgency in the international political negotiations which are currently moving at a snail's pace," said Hare.
Greenpeace called on all Ministers of Industrial countries attending the Climate convention meeting in Bonn to commit to a deadline for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol and a deadline for entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol. The deadline should be no later than the Rio+10 Summit in 2002. This would be ten years after the adoption of the Climate Convention at the Earth Summit at Rio in 1992.
"Any later than this and the implementation of the protocol would be called into question," said Hare
The Kyoto Protocol was agreed by more than 160 nations in Japan in 1997 and set, legally binding greenhouse gas reduction targets for each industrialized nation and a global target of 5.2% by 2008- 2012.
