Russia moves to ratify Kyoto Protocol

MOSCOW -- Key ministries of the Russian government began the process of ratifying the Kyoto Protocol yesterday, signaling that President Vladimir V. Putin is preparing to put the landmark global-warming treaty to a vote in parliament.

After weeks of behind-the-scenes meetings aimed at weighing costs and benefits, including Russia's possible admission later this year into the World Trade Organization, Putin directed his Cabinet ministers to ''sign as soon as possible" the draft ratification documents, the first step toward allowing Russia to join the 1997 accord.

The Ministry of Natural Resources approved the documents yesterday, but the Economic Development and Trade Ministry called for more scrutiny of the pact's economic consequences, signaling a possible fight before ratification could occur. Still, environmental activists said they hoped the issue could be presented to the Russian Parliament within the next several weeks.

Russia's participation is a crucial step toward implementation of the protocol, which requires participating industrialized countries to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases, blamed for what many scientists believe could be a precipitous change in global climate.

The protocol, which cannot take effect unless Russia signs, aims to reduce greenhouse gases to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012.

Analysts cautioned that Russia's ratification would not be certain until the final package cleared the parliament and was presented to Putin for signature, a warning that reflected the deep divisions that persist within Russia over the benefits of instituting the treaty.

Russia has waffled for the past year over joining the Kyoto camp, weighing fears that its ceilings on carbon emissions could put a costly stranglehold on economic growth against promises of new foreign industrial investment and sales of unused emissions credits.

One of Putin's top economic advisers, Andrei Illarionov, has repeatedly echoed the criticisms of US officials who elected not to join the protocol, believing it would impose heavy economic costs while failing to provide promised ecological benefits.

Yet European trade partners have raised Kyoto ratification as an implied condition for World Trade Organization membership and for European concessions on Russia's lower-than-market domestic energy pricing, a key factor in keeping Russian industry competitive and able to attract foreign investment for the major industrial modernization projects envisioned under Kyoto.

Alexander Kosarikov, deputy chairman of the parliament's ecology committee, said the Russian Foreign Ministry had prepared documents for ratification and the process was underway.

Sources familiar with the Kremlin's deliberations said Illarionov launched a major campaign to defeat Kyoto over the late summer.

Then, on Sept. 8, Putin aide Igor Shuvalov met with several academicians, and it was decided to send Illarionov's anti-Kyoto report to a number of specialists and economists for reaction.

''Apparently, President Putin has been asking himself the question of whether Illarionov's arguments are tenable, sound, and well-grounded," said Viktor Danilov-Danilyan, an economics professor with the Russian Academy of Sciences and a key backer of Kyoto ratification who was at the meeting. ''From what Shuvalov was doing and saying, I was able to conclude that there has been a change in the president's stance on the Kyoto Protocol ratification in the positive direction."