Socialists Demand Audit over Bulgaria's UN Carbon Trade Ban

Domestic | May 14, 2010, Friday // 16:50|  views

Bulgarian Environment Minister Nona Karadzhova has been criticized by the opposition for the government's handling of the carbon trade issue, Photo by BGNES

The opposition Socialist Party has demanded a public review of Bulgaria's national inventory system for greenhouse gas emissions a day after the Cabinet announced the UN was to ban the country from trading with carbon quotas.

In a declaration presented Friday concerning Bulgaria's suspension from carbon emissions trade under the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Socialists insist that the UN audit of Bulgaria's national inventory system for greenhouse gases and the official correspondence between the Ministry of Environment and Water and the UN Climate Secretariat be made public.

“The correspondence should reveal the comments and the measures the Bulgarian government is planning to take in order to recover its legitimacy to participate in the carbon trading. If there is no reaction, that means not only the Minister, but the whole government is not capable of handling Bulgarian and state cases successfully,” the Socialist Party states.

Its declaration reminds its proposal during the 2010 state budget debates to envisage a revenue of BGN 200 M from carbon trading. According to the anti-crisis program that Bulgaria's center-right government adopted in April, the state budget was supposed to get BGN 350 M in revenue from selling carbon quotas – an intention which will fail to materialize because of the UN ban.

The Socialist Party points out that in April, the Council of Ministers reviewed the amendments in the Environmental Act and found no information stating Bulgaria is not entitled for trading carbon dioxide.

“This situation raises some questions: when did the Minister of Environment and Water realized there was a problem – during the audit, or during her 9-month participation in the country's government,” ask the Socialists while questioning the present government's competence for diplomacy and partnership with other countries.

On Thursday, Environment Minister Nona Karadzhova said Bulgaria will be suspended from carbon emissions trading under the Kyoto Protocol if a United Nations' committee confirms its preliminary decision to revoke its accreditation under the treaty.

The United Nations' committee is expected to revoke the country's accreditation under the treaty, which will exclude Bulgarian companies from trading in greenhouse gas trading schemes, on June 30. On Friday, the Environment Minister pointed out she expected the restoration of the accreditation in the fall of 2010.

Speaking at a forum in Sofia Thursday, Karadzhova said a UN report under the Framework Convention on Climate Change has exposed “devastating” flaws of Bulgaria’s National System for Evaluation of the Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

The Environment Minister blamed the problems on the inactivity on part of her predecessor, Dzhevdet Chakarov.

Under the Kyoto Protocol, Bulgaria agreed to reduce its CO2 emissions by 8% compared to their 1988 level and emit no more than 130 million tonnes of CO2 a year.

Bulgaria’s government of the GERB party was aware of the possibility that the country’s accreditation for carbon trading might be revoke when it first received the “devastating” report in September 2009. It has notified the major businesses but the Environment Ministry decided not to make it public until the spring of the following year hoping to be able to fix the issues in the meantime, admitted Minister Karadzhova.

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Tags: carbon dioxide, carbon dioxide plan, greenhouse gas emissions, UN, Kyoto Protocol, Nona Karadzhova, Environment Minister, BSP, Bulgarian Socialist Party

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