RSEU documents

We are seriously concerned with the poor outcome of the international negotiations toward a new comprehensive agreement on the issues of climate change, which should replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. The Accord developed in Copenhagen has never turned into a UN Decision. Voluntary proposals of various countries on reduction of their greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 2020 as a whole, and, in particular Russia’s plans of 15-25% level below 1990 by 2020 are absolutely insufficient to stop growth of global emissions and reach the goal of 50% reduction required for the middle of the century.

On 14 December, representatives of Russian NGOs – observers to the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen, handed the Open Letter to Alexander Bedritsky, Advisor to the President of Russian Federation on issues of climate change. In the Letter, the NGOs call for continuation of the talks under the working group on the Kyoto Protocol, to officially announce the inappropriate character of transfer of unused quotas from the Kyoto period to future periods, and not to consider nuclear energy as a renewable energy source and as a technology that could contribute to climate change mitigation.

On 12 October, the First Channel of the Russian TV has shown a ‘documentary’, which denied connection between global warming and human activities, gave ignorant arguments and misrepresentations of the Kyoto Protocol, and climate research results.

The RSEU Climate Secretariat states that propaganda of inaction in the sphere of adaptation to climate change and cuts of GHG emissions is harmful both for Russia and for the whole world. The RSEU is sure that transition to high-tech energy-efficient technologies will contribute not only in cuts of GHG emissions, but in reaching competitiveness of the Russian economy.

Adopted on November 11, 2008 at the all-Russian RSEU Conference on “Public participation in the development of the national politics in the area of climate and energy.”