November 26, 2000

U.N. Conference Fails to Reach Accord on Global Warming

By ANDREW C. REVKIN

The breakdown, after two weeks of intensive talks here, stunned many participants, environmental groups and observers, even though they had recognized from the start the enormous task of finding common ground on ways to cut the greenhouse gases emitted by every smokestack and tailpipe from Boston to Brisbane. 

"I'm gutted," John Prescott, Britain's deputy prime minister, said as he left the hall this morning after failing to negotiate a compromise primarily between the United States — by far the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases — and the European Union. 

But Jan Pronk, the conference president and Dutch environment minister, did not concede defeat, and instead proposed that the meeting be suspended, with another session perhaps as soon as May. 

The top American negotiator, Frank E. Loy, visibly tired and rubbing his forehead and eyes, agreed that the effort should continue, even when he and the Clinton administration would be handing over the task to a new administration. 

"We will not give up," Mr. Loy said. "The stakes are too high, the science too decisive, and our planet and our children too precious."

From the outset the talks were riven by conflicting agendas as they aimed to fill in the fine print of a 1997 treaty, called the Kyoto Protocol, drafted by more than 170 countries. 

Poor countries sought billions of dollars to help them adapt to climate change, while rich nations aimed to blunt the economic impact of the treaty by finding the least costly ways to cut their emissions of warming gases. 

But today the failure came down to persistent disagreement between industrial powers on opposite sides of the Atlantic over the role of trees and properly managed farmland in acting as "sinks" to absorb carbon dioxide, the dominant greenhouse gas. 

The lack of understanding on that issue was a key to the breakdown of the talks, participants on both sides said. European negotiators ultimately rejected a compromise proposal — which early this morning seemed to have sealed a deal — as too harmful to the environment and too favorable to the United States. 

If enacted, the treaty the negotiators had hoped to complete would commit three dozen industrialized countries to cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 to at least 5 percent below emissions in 1990. 

So far, however, no industrialized country has ratified the pact, and as negotiations have dragged on in the intervening years, the emissions of most of the world's leading producers of greenhouse gases have only continued to rise, a trend that helped add new urgency to the current round of talks. 

When the treaty was originally drafted in Japan three years ago, the United States, Canada and other large countries said they would seek credit toward their emissions targets for forested areas, but those talks never settled on an amount. Negotiators at the current conference had hoped to arrive at one. 

But ultimately no agreement could be reached. Around 3 a.m., Mr. Prescott, from Britain, and representatives of two other European nations met with the United States team over a compromise proposal. Members of both delegations said agreement was reached in that room.