Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Kyoto
Since the UNFCCC was set up, the nations of the world, 'the parties', have been meeting
annually at the 'Conference of the Parties' (COPs) to move negotiations forward. Only five
years after the UNFCCC was created at COP3 on the 13th December 1997, the first inter-
national agreement, the Kyoto Protocol, was drawn up. This stated the general principles
for a worldwide treaty on cutting GHG emissions and, more specifically, that all developed
nations would aim to cut their emissions by 5.2 per cent on their 1990 levels by 2008-12.
The Kyoto Protocol was ratified and signed in Bonn on 23 July 2001, making it a legal
treaty. However, the USA, under the leadership of President Bush, withdrew from the cli-
mate negotiations in March 2001 and so did not sign the Kyoto Protocol at the Bonn meet-
ing. With the USA producing about one-quarter of the world's carbon dioxide pollution,
this was a big blow for the treaty. Moreover, the targets set by the Kyoto Protocol were re-
duced during the Bonn meeting to make sure that Japan, Canada, and Australia would join
(see
Box 3
). Australia finally made the Kyoto Protocol legally binding in December 2007.
The treaty did not include developing countries. This was to balance out the historic legacy
of emissions by developed countries (
Figure 4
). It was then assumed that developing coun-
tries would join the post-2012 agreement. The Kyoto Protocol came into force on 16
February 2005, after Russia ratified the treaty, thereby meeting the requirement that at least
55 countries, representing more than 55 per cent of the global emissions, had signed up to
it. Russia's membership tipped the scales, which allowed the Kyoto Protocol to become in-
ternational law. The Kyoto Protocol provided 38 industrialized nations with GHG emis-
sions reduction targets. A total $500 million (£350 million) fund per year was to be
provided by the industrialized world to help developing countries adapt to climate change
and provide new clean technologies. It also set up the Clean Development Mechanism
(CDM) so that developed countries could invest in and gain from a carbon credit in a de-
veloping country project. The lack of multi-level governance meant that the CDM did not
work as well as was expected. For example, credits for projects involving the capture of in-
dustrial gases (hydrofluorocarbons or HFCs) have been regrettably easy to game. The regu-
lation has created a perverse incentive for companies to produce more HCFC-22, a refriger-
ant and powerful GHG being phased out under the Montreal Protocol, in return for windfall
profits for capturing the HFC-23 by-product from its production. About 70 per cent of Cer-
tified Emission Reductions in the CDM have come from projects of this kind. Depress-
ingly, the European Commission concluded in 2012 that production of HCFC-22 would
have been lower today if the CDM had been absent.
