"We cannot join in on present-day terms-the protocol has a more pronounced economic and political content than environmental," she said to Novosti.
As she sees it, Russia should be entitled to specified hothouse gas exhaust quotas to sell them at an annual 100 to 130 million tonnes for a threshold 40 US dollars a tonne, which promises an approximate forty billion revenue within ten years. If market prices get going in that field, Russia will not gain anything with eight dollars a tonne, at the highest, warns the expert.
Yuri Israel, Full Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, staff researcher of the Moscow-based Institute of Global Climate and Ecology, earlier came up with calculations. He does not think Russia will make more than a lump $200 million on the Kyoto protocol. It will pay $150 to an exorbitant 600 a tonne as soon as it sells off all stocked-up quotas-as against present-day token four to five dollars a tonne.
Russia has every right to receive forest maintenance compensations, what with its vast woodlands. Money compensations would be preferable to extra quotas, says Miss Kashirina. Meanwhile, the ideas of her research team have not found reflection in the protocol, she sighs.
