Tag: Kyoto Protocol

Ten years ago, on 16 February 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force. The aim of this international agreement was to reduce the annual emissions of greenhouse gases. Targets and expectations were high, but have the goals been met, and what should happen next? The Kyoto Protocol aimed to reduce the global emissions of greenhouse gases by 5.2 per cent by the end of 2012. In order for the agreement to come into force, it had to be ratified by at least 55 states. These were responsible for more than 55 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions in 1990. It was a difficult process. The US initially signed, but then exited the Protocol in 2001. Only with Russia's entry did Kyoto finally come into effect. Meanwhile, 191 states and the EU have ratified it. "The Kyoto Protocol has provided an important impetus for politics, business and the wider community to grapple more with climate change", says Martin Heimann, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena. It represents the first time that the international community has anchored an absolute and legally binding limitation on greenhouse gas emissions in an international treaty. The Protocol pertained to primarily industrialised countries ...

UNFCCC negotiations in Geneva. (Image Credit: UN Photo) Countries with targets under the Kyoto Protocol—the world’s first emission reduction treaty—have collectively exceeded their original ambition early analysis shows. Those countries who took on targets under the treaty have reduced their emissions by over 20 per cent—well in excess of the 5 per cent target they aimed to meet. The achievement, which comes as the world on Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, underlines what can be achieved via international cooperative action. The news also comes as countries or Parties meeting in Geneva this week produced the negotiating text for the 2015 universal Paris agreement—the next key chapter in humanity’s quest to chart a defining path to keep the world and its people under a 2 degree C temperature rise. Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said: “The Kyoto Protocol was a remarkable achievement in many ways. It not only underscored the scientific reality that greenhouse gas emissions need to fall. But it also put in place pioneering concepts, flexible options, practical solutions and procedures for accountability that we often take for granted today”.   “I am ...

The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) the worldwide trade association for shipowners has made an important written submission to the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) suggesting a possible way forward with respect to complex discussions about additional global regulations to further reduce CO2 emissions from merchant ships.

Kyoto extension could be flexible to enable deeper targets A yearly review of countries' greenhouse gas emissions cut pledges under an extension to the global climate pact the Kyoto Protocol could be a way to raise climate ambitions, the European Union's lead climate negotiator said on Wednesday.Negotiators from over 180 countries are meeting in Bonn, Germany, until Friday to work towards getting a new global climate pact signed by 2015 and to ensure ambitious emissions cuts are made after the Kyoto Protocol expires at the end of this year.United Nations' climate talks in South Africa last year agreed to extend Kyoto for five or eight years from 2013 into a second commitment period and to get all countries in 2015 to sign a new deal that would force them to cut emissions no later than 2020.Nations are under increasing pressure to put emissions cut pledges for Kyoto's second phase on the table or deepen existing ones before the current commitment period ends on Dec. 31.The EU, which pledges to cut emissions by 20 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, has said it would move to a deeper target of 30 percent if other big emitters made similar moves.However, the worsening ...

Canada's Governement has long been hostile to the Kyoto agreement Canada made good Monday onspeculation that surfaced two weeks ago regarding the country's intentions to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.Speaking at a news conference in Ottawa, Canada's minister for the environment, Peter Kent,said the decision would save the nation some $14 billion in penalties that would accrue for failure to meet emissions targets agreed to by a previous government in the 1997 pact -- the first international accord aimed at reducing global emissions of planet-warming gases."As we have said, Kyoto -- for Canada -- is in the past," Kent said, according to awire transcriptforwarded by the environment ministry. Kent had just returned fromglobal climate talks in Durban, South Africa. "As such," he continued, "we are invoking our legal right to formally withdraw from Kyoto."Canada's conservative government under Stephen Harper, who assumed the title of prime minister in 2006, has long been hostile to the Kyoto agreement, which wasratified by Liberal Party Prime Minister Jean Chrétien in 2002.The Harper government has charged its predecessors with never making any real attempts to comply with Kyoto's emissions limits. It has also issued concerns, shared by the U.S. and other developed countries, that Kyoto's ...