Climate Change

Belarus shares global concerns over the impact of climate change and supports international efforts on reducing carbon emissions.

We pledged to cut our greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) by 15 per cent against 1990 by 2012. These commitments are the most stringent among the state parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Amendment of Belarus

However, our obligations on cutting carbon emissions are still not internationally and legally recognized as Belarus is still out of the Annex B to the Kyoto Protocol to the UNFCCC.

To secure our place in the list of members to the Annex B, we need the adoption of the amendment that Belarus introduced specifically to this end, by 3/4 of all state parties to the UNFCCC. These are 144 countries.

Our efforts on ensuring the adoption of our amendment continue to be vibrant. We strenuously work on this matter with our partners both bilaterally and within multilateral fora, including the UNFCCC state parties conferences.

As soon as Belarus is in the Annex B to the Kyoto Protocol, it will be able to step up efforts in carrying out environmental projects, encouraging larger use of energy efficiency technologies and alternative sources of energy. These are all-important elements of our sustainable development strategy.

It also will put Belarus to the MRV (measurement, reporting, verification) comprehensive monitoring system to screen our progress in delivering our carbon reduction commitments.

On its part, Belarus has completed all procedures needed to take part in the Kyoto Protocol market mechanisms but is still ‘on the waiting list’ as our amendment is not yet endorsed.

A new climate deal

As negotiations on a new climate deal carry on we continue to promote our stance on this critical issue in consultations with our partners abroad.

In particular, we want the new climate deal to have due account for the objective national differences that countries understandably have in mind while coming up with concrete numbers of GHG reductions.

We also stand for keeping the market mechanisms and streamlining their enforcement procedures, encouraging better access to cutting-edge technologies for every nation, and due account for the vital role that swamps and peat swamps are playing in absorbing CO2 across our planet.

In particular, we suggest to incorporate to the new climate deal a specific paragraph about peat swamps that are a large part of our landscape. The degradation of peat swamps in the world over triggers carbon emissions totaling around 10 per cent of all С02 emissions. Meanwhile, efforts on restoring peat swamps clearly pay off in the long run as they help considerably reduce carbon accumulation in the atmosphere.

In terms of carbon reductions, we flagged up our readiness to cut the GHG by up to 10 per cent by 2020 against 1990 as it corresponds to our aim on raising the energy efficiency of our economy by 60 per cent in ten years.