Kyoto Protocol
Global Climate Change and the Kyoto Protocol
The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro. Pursuant to its objectives, in 1997 more than 160 nations met in Kyoto, Japan to negotiate binding limitations on greenhouse gas emissions for the developed nations. The outcome was an international convention, popularly known as the Kyoto Protocol, in which developed nations pledged to limit their emissions of greenhouse gases using 1990 levels as the base. The key elements of the Kyoto Protocol are:
• Annex I countries (developed countries) are required to limit emissions of greenhouse gases to between 92-110% of 1990 levels between 2008-2012.
• Emissions are to be controlled through a system of country allocated permits that can be traded among the Annex I countries.
• Project based emission reductions would be credited towards the targets.
• Certified emission reductions starting in 2000 would count toward compliance in the first budget period.
• Activities that absorb carbon (sinks) could be used as offsets against emission targets.
• The Kyoto Protocol shall come into force on the ninetieth day after the date on which not less than 55 parties to the convention, incorporating Annex I countries that account for at least 55 per cent of the total carbon dioxide emissions for 1990 from that group have formally adopted the Accord.
All parties to the convention are subject to general commitments to respond to climate change. They agree to compile an inventory of greenhouse gas emissions and submit reports on actions they are taking to implement Kyoto.
Using the example of the United States, they are committed to the following under the protocol:
• US carbon dioxide emissions are limited to 1,243 million metric tons of carbon (93% of 1990 levels) between 2008-2012.
• Under business-as-usual conditions, US carbon dioxide emissions are projected to average 1,740 million metric tons.
• The US must reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 500 million metric tons, or 30%, below business-as-usual levels.
Other countries are required to reduce emissions (a negative number indicates a permitted increase) as follows:
Source: Energy Intelligence
under the flexible mechanisms of the protocol, countries can reduce their emissions domestically by:
• Shifting the mix of fuels that are consumed.
• Curtailing its fossil fuel combustion.
• Making further reductions in other greenhouse gases, particularly those with higher global warming potentials.
• Expanding sinks.
Or, they can achieve the reductions abroad by:
• Purchasing emission credits from other Annex I countries.
• Investing in emission-reducing or sequestering projects in other Annex I countries (joint implementation).
• Investing in emission-reducing or sequestering projects in developing countries (clean development mechanisms).
There are various uncertainties under the Protocol:
• The availability of emission credits from other Annex I countries.
• Participation by non-Annex I countries.
• The determination of real and verifiable environmental benefits from clean development mechanisms.
• The amount of a country's reduction that will be allowed to be achieved abroad.
For example, the United States agreed to reduce emissions from 1990 levels by 7% during the period 2008-2012. About 83 percent of the United States greenhouse gas emissions in 1990 were carbon dioxide released by the use of energy, so any actions to reduce greenhouse gases are likely to have a significant impact on energy markets.
The Fatal Flaw in Kyoto
The problem is that the United States, the consumer of 25 per cent of the world's oil, 26 per cent of the world's gas and 23 per cent of the world's coal, failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 1998. The Bush Administration came into office in 2001 and believes that technological improvements hold the key to managing the risk of climate change. They resolutely refuse to take measures envisioned in the Kyoto Protocol that could limit economic activity - however damaging they may be to the environment.
This raises an important political issue. Fast developing countries such as China and India ask how it can be just that they should limit economic growth and use expensive modern technology that will deny their citizens the standard of living that the United States is unwilling to compromise.
But all is not negative. As of March 2004, 84 countries have ratified the protocol. Although emissions data are still incomplete, it appears that the Annex I countries have succeeded - at least collectively - in returning their emissions to 1990 levels. The reduction in some countries was not in fact due to environmental policies. In parts of the Former Soviet Union the continuing collapse of energy-intensive heavy industry has done the job of the Kyoto Protocol without government intervention or the application of new technology. It is thought that emissions declined by about 40 per cent in these countries during the 1990s. Emissions from developing countries, of which China and India are leading examples, increased by 7 per cent in the same period.
At the World Summit on Sustainable Development that took place in Rio de Janeiro in 2002, enough new pledges to ratify the Kyoto Protocol were offered to suggest that it might reach the threshold for it to become binding (see above).
Therefore, intensive efforts will now take place to implement the Protocol in full. However, it was never expected that the Kyoto Protocol would solve the problem of climate change in the first commitment period, the five years between 2008-2012. It is just a first step and negotiations to decide how to make further progress will commence in the near future.