What is the Kyoto protocol?
In response to the threat of climate change, the UN passed the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, which was gradually ratified by 156 countries, and later infamously rejected by the world’s biggest polluters – the US and Australia. The Protocol sets the target of reducing emissions by an average of 5.2 percent below 1990 greenhouse gas levels by the year 2012. Emissions trading, the main mechanism for achieving this target, was pushed by the US in response to heavy corporate lobbying. The arrangement partitions and privatises the atmosphere and institutes the buying and selling of “permits to pollute” just as any other international commodity.
A. Following the original Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was introduced and has now been ratified by over 140 countries. In 1997, at the fourth Conference of the Parties to the Convention, (often referred to as ‘COP 4’), the Kyoto Protocol was signed. This set out the targets for the industrialised countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol was ratified by the required number of countries in February 2005 and came into force. This means that in the five years between 2008 and 2012 each signatory country has to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions below what they were in 1990. The total emissions reduction is 5.7% below 1990 levels, although each country has a different target. The reduction for the UK for example is 12.5%.
The Kyoto Protocol is an international environmental agreement decided under the UNFCCC in Kyoto in 1997 which requires from a certain number of industrialised countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to a certain level (these commitments are legally-binding for industrialised countries and non-binding for all the others). This protocol is valid until 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol is a legally binding agreement that arose out of the UNFCCC to tackle climate change through a reduction of green house gas emissions. Countries (those listed in Annex I) are legally bound to reduce man-made green house gases emissions by approximately 5.2%. Individual countries have their own reduction targets outlined in Annex B of the Kyoto Protocol. The text of the protocol was adopted at the third conference of the parties to the UNFCCC in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997. However the protocol suffered many years of delay. The United States and Australia two major green house gas emitters did not ratify the treaty. The Protocol entered into force on February 15, 2005 when Russia ratified the treaty.
