From an economic point of view, participation in the Kyoto Protocol is not right for Russia at the moment. We need to maintain investment in processing industries and in raw commodities processing. And this will doubtlessly have a negative environmental impact.

Viktor Ivanter,
Director of the Institute of Economic Forecasting, Russian Academy of Sciences and member, Russian Academy of Sciences

The Kyoto Protocol is still up for debate. The world has yet to come to a single opinion as to whether carbon dioxide is harmful and how it affects the environment. For this reason, it is hard to say how well the Kyoto Protocol responds to global climactic issues.
It is simply not true that Russia will be able to make money off of the Protocol. This is the stuff of pure fantasy. Not a single Western company has yet to make any investment offers to Russia as part of the Kyoto Protocol.
From an economic point of view, the Kyoto Protocol is simply not right for Russia at the moment. We have other high-priority goals. We need to maintain investment in processing industries. We first and foremost have to put money into processing raw materials. This means large-scale investment. This will certainly have a negative impact on the environment. However, we cannot put the cart before the horse. We need to invest first in manufacturing and only then in the environment.
Obviously, the decision to join on to the Kyoto Protocol is political in nature. I am not sure whether we will earn great political dividends from this or not. In terms of EU concessions regarding Russian WTO membership, we just might. However, WTO membership is also not right for us at the moment. It is not clear what we stand to gain from the WTO, as all real gains will come only once Russia is able to export high-tech products in large quantities.
Russia has to ratify the Protocol, as it has already signed it. For this reason, there is nothing surprising about the Russian position on the issue. Why we decided to sign in the first place is unclear. It is highly unlikely that Russia will be able to keep to the Protocol’s requirements.

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