Adelaide Advertiser
Thursday 24/4/2008 Page: 38
GREECE has been suspended from United Nations carbon trading in an unprecedented punishment for violating greenhouse gas reporting rules that underpin a fight against global warming. Legal experts enforcing compliance with the Kyoto Protocol said the UN also was opening proceedings against Canada for alleged violations of rules on accounting for heat-trapping gases.
"Greece is declared to be in noncompliance," the enforcement branch stated. Greek authorities had failed to maintain a proper national system for recording greenhouse gas emissions - the key to ensuring compliance with the protocol seeking to slow temperature rises that could bring more floods, droughts, heatwaves and rising seas. "Greece is not eligible to participate in the (trading) mechanisms... of the protocol pending the resolution of the question of implementation," the enforcement branch stated. It is the first such ruling since Kyoto came into force in 2005.
Submission of new data by Greece had not entirely convinced the compliance experts, who were seeking extra opinions, said a UN official. who declined to be named. Of the Greek ruling, spokesman John Hay of the Climate Change Secretariat said: "This case shows that the compliance committee of the Kyoto Protocol is up and running properly." The Kyoto Protocol imposes a cap on emissions of greenhouse gas by 37 industrialised countries but allows them to meet their targets by paying for emissions cuts elsewhere, such as in the developing world or former east bloc nations.
The ruling means Greece is barred from such offsetting, except under one track of emissions trading with former communist countries. Greek companies still will be able to take part in a European Union market for carbon dioxide. Greece's emissions were running 26 per cent above 1990 levels in 2006, slightly above the nation's Kyoto target of no more than 25 per cent above 1990 levels between 2008 and 20012. As a result it has little need to buy offsets. The enforcement branch also said Canada had failed to provide a proper registry for greenhouse gases and had missed a January 1 reporting deadline by more than two months. The Canadian finding was preliminary and needed further research before any rulings.
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