Growing support for Kyoto Protocol

A look at the new climate change deal

Here are some of the key points from the new climate change deal that were agreed upon by the countries who participated the UN climate change talks in Durban, South Africa:

EXTENSION OF THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

After the failure of Copenhagen in 2009 to come up with a new, internationally-binding deal, and only incremental progress a year later in Cancun, a partial legal vacuum had loomed as drafting a new UN treaty is extremely time-consuming.

The new climate change deal extends Kyoto, whose first phase of emissions cuts run from 2008 to the end of 2012. The second commitment period will run from Jan. 1 2013 until the end of 2017.

LEGAL FORM

Delegates agreed to start negotiations for a new legally binding treaty to be decided by 2015 and to come into force by 2020.

The process for doing so, called the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, would “develop a new protocol, another legal instrument or agreed outcome with legal force that will be applicable to all Parties to the UN climate convention,” under a working group.

The exact nature of what “legal instrument” or “agreed outcome” has not yet been decided.

AMBITION

Delegates decided the process towards developing a new legal instrument would “raise levels of ambition” in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

At the request of the EU and the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), the delegates agreed to launch a work plan to identify options for closing the “ambition gap” between countries’ current emissions reduction pledges for 2020 and the goal of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius.

However, the Durban negotiations did not manage to extend the emissions cut pledges made in both Copenhagen in 2009 and 2010 in Cancun.

TRANSPARENCY

The Durban Package brings into operation new arrangements for making more transparent the actions taken by both developed and developing countries to address their emissions. This is a key measure for building trust between parties.

FINANCE

Poor nations are most in need of finance to help pay for adapting to global warming and introducing low emission energy and industrial processes.

Against the backdrop of a sovereign debt crisis, developed nations are also ill-placed to commit money beyond short-term financing that runs out at the end of next year.

The Durban talks made headway on agreeing the design of Green Climate Fund to channel up to $100-billion a year by 2020 to poorer nations, but achieved little on establishing where the money will come from to fill it.

NEW MARKET MECHANISMS

Talks agreed to define new market mechanisms under a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, but pushed forward a decision to develop rules for them until next year.

Delegates decided the mechanisms would operate under the UNFCCC Conference of the Parties and “bear in mind different circumstances of developed and developing countries”.

The EU wants any new market mechanisms to cut greenhouse gas emissions outside of Kyoto anchored in international law, in order to avoid fragmentation of the international carbon market.

CARBON CAPTURE AND STORAGE

The Durban talks ended six years of debate over whether and how the technology of carbon capture and storage could qualify for carbon offsets under the Clean Development Mechanism.

The Kyoto scheme rewards governments or companies who invest in clean energy projects in developing countries with carbon credits, which they can trade and sell for profit.

The new rules force project developers to put five percent of the carbon credits earned in a reserve, to be awarded to them only after site monitors have proved that no carbon dioxide has leaked from the underground store 20 years after the end of the crediting period.

REDUCED EMISSIONS FROM DEFORESTATION AND DEGRADATION (REDD)

Delegates agreed to consider private funding and market-based mechanisms as options to finance the program on reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, paving the way for billions of dollars of private investment.

JOINT IMPLEMENTATION

The Durban meeting failed to breathe new life into Kyoto’s Joint Implementation (JI) mechanism, as negotiators once again dodged a decision on whether to allow emission reduction projects to earn carbon credits under the scheme beyond 2012.

Like in Cancun, delegates agreed to delay a decision on whether to decouple the future of JI from that of Kyoto until next year’s talks.

The postponement caused concern among some negotiators that a few nations with vast Kyoto emissions right inventories, would as a precaution ramp up offset issuance ahead of that.

What is Kyoto protocol?

In 1997, delegates from 194 nations met in Kyoto, Japan, and collectively promised to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012, as a first step toward global cooperation on limiting carbon-driven climate change. The treaty they produced, known as the Kyoto Protocol, expires at the end of 2012.

The treaty required the major industrialized nations to meet targets on emissions reduction but imposed no mandates on developing countries, including emerging economic powers and sources of global greenhouse gas emissions like China, India, Brazil and South Africa.

The United States is not a party to the protocol. It was negotiated by the Clinton administration, but the Senate voted 95 to 0 against even considering ratification because of those asymmetrical obligations. President George W. Bush flatly repudiated it.

Some major countries, including Canada, Japan and Russia, have said they will not agree to an extension of the protocol unless the unbalanced requirements of developing and developed countries are changed. That is similar to the United States’ position, which is that any successor treaty must apply equally to all major economies.

But the European Union, the major developing countries, and most African and Pacific island nations would like to see the Kyoto process extended as a prelude to a more ambitious, binding international agreement that would take effect 2020. The goal would be to reduce emissions enough to keep the average global temperature from ever rising more than 2 degrees Celsius, or about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above its current level.

The fate of the Kyoto agreement was a central topic at the international gathering on global warming in Durban, South Africa, in December 2011.

But the issue was left unresolved at the meeting, which ended with modest accomplishments: the promise to work toward a new global treaty in coming years. The future treaty deal renewed the protocol for several more years. It also began a process for replacing the protocol with something that treats all countries — including the economic powerhouses China, India and Brazil — equally. The future treaty deal was the most highly contested element of a package of agreements that emerged from the extended talks among the 200 nations that met in Durban. The expiration date of the protocol — 2017 or 2020 — and the terms of any agreement that replaces it will be negotiated at future sessions.

The United States has been criticized at such gatherings for years, in part because of its rejection of the Kyoto framework and in part because it has not adopted a comprehensive domestic program for reducing its own greenhouse gas emissions.

President Obama has pledged to reduce American emissions 17 percent below 2005 levels by 2020, but his preferred approach, a nationwide cap-and-trade system for carbon pollution, was blocked in the Senate in 2010 after being passed by the House the year before.

United States emissions are down about 6 percent over the past five years, largely because of the drop in industrial and electricity production caused by the recession.

Is Kyoto protocol a solution to climate change?

By: Elijah Recto

Climate change, like global warming is a hot topic nowadays. Global warming is an increase in the earth's atmospheric and oceanic temperature due to an increase in the greenhouse effect resulting especially from pollution. Greenhouse gases like chlorofluorocarbons, carbon dioxide and methane absorb heat from the sun and increase the temperature of the earth. Scientists term global warming a serious issue because it can create problems for mankind in the future.

Scientists believe that global warming is caused by many anthropogenic factors such as deforestation, emission of greenhouse gases by industries, burning of fuels etc. This emerging threat compelled the international community and the UN to adopt new rules to protect the earth. One of the rules is Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol is an international system of rules which were passed by the UN in 1997 to minimize the global warming by reducing the emission of the greenhouse gases. There are three mechanisms to implement Kyoto protocol: (A) Trade in permits to emit greenhouse gases. (B) Joint implementation mechanism. (C) Clean development mechanism. This article will particularly discuss the negative effects of Clean Development Mechanism projects on developing countries. “The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse reduction commitment to invest in projects that reduce greenhouse gases emissions in developing countries as an alternative to more expensive greenhouse gas emission reductions in their own countries”.

The Kyoto protocol is ineffective and insufficient .Many projects working under the CDM do not fulfill the commitment of reduction in the emission of greenhouse gases, and undermine the credibility of Kyoto Treaty by endangering life in many developing countries.

The Kyoto protocol is not sufficient and it is not possible to reduce global warming to a satisfactory level through this pact. Most scientists believe that we need a 50% reduction of current levels of greenhouse gases by 2050 to stabilize world climate. If the emission of greenhouse gases is greater than their reduction then the Kyoto protocol is futile. Thus, we need some other regulations which can produce effective results in the future.

Most of the developed countries for their cheap investment in projects in the developing countries do not care about pollution.  The clean development mechanism is not effective and fruitful. It has other side effects as well. The promotion of monoculture plantation (cultivation of single crop in a large area) under the CDM creates many social and financial problems. Developed countries are the leading emitters of greenhouse gases. The Kyoto Protocol does nothing in pursuing developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emission. On the contrary it further facilitates them economically under CDM. The CDM prevents developed countries from reducing greenhouse gases in the following way. Rapid growth and industrialization has brought us to a point where our energy needs are increasing day by day. Coal and fossil fuels are the largest sources that fulfill our energy demands but at the cost of greenhouse gases. To reduce the greenhouse gases we should find alternate sources of energy such as wind energy, solar energy, bio energy etc that are environment friendly.

                To sum up, developing countries contain 75% of the world’s population, and they emit greenhouse gases. Most of the projects running under the label of CDM cause pollution in developing countries.

Greenhouse gas market to slow global warming

By: Christopher Castro

Greenhouse gases are now being bought and sold on the open market by countries concerned about climate change. The Kyoto Protocol created the market in greenhouse gases to reduce emissions of methane, carbon dioxide and other gasses heating up the planet

Greenhouse gases who are the prime culprits in global warming, trap heat in the Earth's atmosphere. Since the middle of the 19th century, human agriculture and industrialization have poured a huge amount of them into the atmosphere, where they have captured enough heat to initiate climate change andabout 0.6 degrees Celsius during the past century, according to the United Nations

The Kyoto Protocol, with more than 140 nations on board, aims to use market forces to rein in emissions by creating a market in greenhouse gasses. Under the pact, participating countries may emit a specific quantity of the gasses, and can sell off excess "credits" for profit and because of that, a lot brokers think that the agreement could make a lot of business..

Investors are funding projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions, like hydroelectric dams and renewable energy plants, and earning investors credits to offset emissions from factories and power plants. The biggest buyers were the Japanese companies and Dutch government who are snapping up credits offered in regions such as Asia and Latin America.

The United States proposed the market plan for the Kyoto Protocol when it first signed the treaty in 1998. It withdrew in 2001 arguing that the treaty failed to appreciably slow global warming or include developing nations. Despite initial resistance, it has been embraced by Europe and Japan as an affordable way to slow climate change.

A sad truth: As time goes by, fewer nations remember Kyoto protocol

By: Jay Alvin Co

In 1997, 194 nations collectively promised as a first step to reduce emissions by about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. But only 37 industrialized nations agreed to binding targets under the treaty, known as the Kyoto Protocol; the developing nations promised simply to do their best.

The overall results have been dismal, even by Kyoto’s modest standards. Even 1997 signatories like Japan and Canada will not endorse a new treaty unless the Chinese do, which they won’t.

From 1990 to 2009, global emissions of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels, rose by a whopping 38 percent. The increase would have been far worse were it not for the economic collapse of the old Soviet bloc; emissions from those countries dropped by about one-third.

The biggest obstacle to global progress has been countries like China and India that made no pledges at Kyoto because, they continue to argue that the industrialized world caused most of the problem and thus bore most of the responsibility for solving it. Over all, emissions in countries that did not agree to targets have more than doubled, while China’s have tripled.

In the United States, as the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gases among big economies, America should have taken a leadership role but it did not. The Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto accord, President George W. Bush flatly repudiated it, and Congress failed to put a price on carbon. Having pledged to reduce greenhouse gases by 7 percent, America saw its carbon emissions rise by almost that amount.

On the contrary, it has not been all negative as carbon dioxide emissions rose steadily in the 1990s  partly because the economy took off after the 1992 election, and power plants and factories started operating at full capacity. Emissions then leveled off after 2000, partly because some manufacturing moved abroad but also because rules requiring more energy efficiency began to kick in.

And further improvements are within reach. In the United States, old coal-fired power plants are closing, the price of natural gas is dropping, and automobiles are becoming more efficient. Clean energy sources like solar power are being introduced in poor African nations, and the Chinese are investing heavily in clean energy as well.

Climate Talks Yield Limited Agreement to Work Towards Replacing Kyoto Protocol

By: Elijah Recto

After 72 hours of continuous discussion, the 17th conference of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change wrapped up on December 12, 2011 with simple accomplishments: the promise to work toward a new global treaty in coming years and the establishment of a new climate fund.

The deal on a future treaty renews the Kyoto Protocol, the fraying 1997 emissions agreement that sets different terms for advanced and developing countries, for several more years. But it also begins a process for replacing the Kyoto agreement with something that treats all countries -- including the economic powerhouses China, India and Brazil -- equally.

The deal on a future treaty was the most highly debated element of a package of agreements that emerged from the extended talks among 200 nations here.

The expiration date of the protocol and the terms of any agreement that replaces it is said to be negotiated at future sessions.

The delegates also agreed on the creation of a fund to help poor countries adapt to climate change and to take measures involving the preservation of tropical forests and the development of clean-energy technology. The reserve, called the Green Climate Fund, would help mobilize a promised $100 billion a year in public and private financing by 2020 to assist developing countries in adapting to climate change and converting to clean energy sources.

Even though the meeting took a while many analysts and delegates were unsatisfied with the end results of the discussion saying that the result of the meeting were temporary solutions and not permanent solutions and that it would not have a significant impact on climate change.