Pressure mounts on US to honour Kyoto Protocol

Demonstrators protesting against President Bush's environmental policies Keystone Archive

Switzerland has joined other nations in stepping up the pressure on the Bush administration to honour the Kyoto Protocol on cutting greenhouse gas emissions, at a United Nations conference on sustainable development in New York.

Officials from most of the 41 countries attending the meeting said they intended to press ahead with implementing the Kyoto Protocol, despite President Bush’s rejection of the treaty last month.

David Syz, head of the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (Seco), said the Swiss delegation was aiming to use the meeting to address US concerns in the hope of bringing Washington back on board.

“There is no real alternative to the Kyoto Protocol,” he told swissinfo. “And I think the agreement is certainly the core of the solution [to climate change]. But perhaps we can tune it in a slightly different way.”

The US accounts for some 40 per cent of all greenhouse gas emissions and its participation is seen as crucial if the treaty is to have any meaningful effect on climate change.

Syz added that Switzerland – along with several other nations – would continue to apply pressure on the Bush administration. “America has not come up with any concrete alternatives, and for the moment we are not willing to let it drop.”

Syz said Switzerland intended to push ahead with efforts to cut its emissions, irrespective of what the US decides. “We will continue without the United States, if it refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Of course that would be a very bad solution and we have the feeling that we will be able to find a better one.”

President Bush last month announced that the US was abandoning the treaty because its mandatory pollution reductions were too harmful to the American economy.

The accord calls for countries to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions – mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal – by five per cent by 2012.

The Swiss position is in line with that of the European Union and Japan, which are also putting pressure on the US. The German environment minister, Jurgen Trittin, said this week that “it is our responsibility to finalise decisions which will make ratification of the Kyoto Protocol feasible”.

Syz said Switzerland was aiming to lead by example at the conference, and would draw attention to its efforts to reduce energy use. He cited the country’s 10-year energy-saving programme, introduced in 1991. The Federal Energy Office says that, without the programme, the level of consumption in Switzerland would have risen by 3.6 per cent last year.

swissinfo with agencies