More than a decade after a UN summit in Kyoto spawned the famous protocol on reducing greenhouse gases, nations try again to devise a follow-up regime. What has changed?
 | A Greenpeace activist demonstrates in front of Parliament Hill to call on Canada's government to meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol (Photo: Reuters) |
The Japanese hosts bent over backwards to ensure that the 1997 UN Summit on Climate Change would end 30 months of bickering over paragraphs and provisions. They wanted their summit to be a success – what they got was the Kyoto Protocol. The treaty, actually nothing but an amendment to the toothless United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), gained immediate fame for its tangible stipulations.
As early as 1992, UN members had met at the so-called Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro to reduce greenhouse gases and fight global warming. What they finally came up with – the UNFCCC – called for stabilization of greenhouse gases, but did not set any mandatory limitations on greenhouse gases.
The Kyoto Protocol changed all this by committing industrialized countries to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by at least five per cent below 1990 levels. After years of discussions about ratification, the treaty finally entered into force in 2005 with the signature of former Russian President Vladimir Putin. The actual commitment period, however, did not start until January 2008, and lasts only five years, until December 2012.
Time is running out
The importance of the 2009 Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen has to be measured against this background. It took more then ten years to get the first agreement on greenhouse gas reduction up and running. Now, the world community has only three years left to agree on a follow-up treaty that kicks in once the Kyoto Protocol expires.
 | Infographic (click on the image to enlarge)See emission targets for selected countries as stipulated by the Kyoto Protocol |
Supported by U.S. President Barak Obama, the U.S. delegation will hopefully be more supportive at the upcoming summit in Denmark. It is the irony of history that the nation whose influence shaped the Kyoto Protocol has since remained the odd one out.
During the 1990s, U.S. scientists and politicians played an important role in negotiating the terms of the Kyoto Protocol, and though the United States signed the treaty, the U.S. Senate has never ratified it. Many activists hope that President Obama will finally manage to commit the U.S. to binding agreements.
The central issue that has kept U.S. politicians from embracing the treaty is whether emerging countries like India or China will have to cut their emissions, too. Many of them believe that exempting India and China from emissions cuts would put the United States at a competitive disadvantage on the world market, an argument that is even more important in times of economic crisis.
The international scene has changed dramatically since 1997. China has surpassed the United States as the world’s number-one emitter of greenhouse gases sometime during 2007. India, once a rather marginal producer of carbon emissions, will be the third-biggest source of carbon dioxide by 2015, just behind China and the U.S.
Renegotiating in a changing world
These new realities bestow heightened relevance on America’s key demand: strengthening the responsibilities of developing and emerging countries in any new global scheme. With the U.S. economy in recessions, Americans are even less inclined to yield to demands that leave industrialized countries with the burden of emissions reductions.
Despite the lingering points of disagreement, Mark Kenber, policy director of The Climate Group, is still hopeful. “There is clearly a greater sense of urgency in the international community than a year ago,” says Kenber. “Factors include greater evidence that climate change is already happening, the understanding that the costs of inaction far outweigh the costs of action, and recognition that many of the solutions are already available and, in many cases, being profitably implemented.”
This shift of opinion has been most radical in the United States, and has led to a bizarre situation. While the Kyoto treaty is not implemented on a federal level, many U.S. states have adopted the treaty’s stipulations voluntarily. Action is driven by policymakers in states like California or Michigan, who have set caps on their citizens’ and companies’ emissions. Some of have even set up regional carbon trading markets.
The final word on Kyoto will only be known around 2012, when countries tally up their emissions of the 2008-2012 period to see if they made enough cuts. Those who overshoot their targets in 2012 will have to make both the promised cuts and 30 percent more in a second period from 2013. That is, if politicians can settle on the necessary follow-up treaty.
editor: Thilo Kunzemann
latest update: September 8, 2009
Do you have something interesting to add? Write a comment and discuss this topic with other readers. Comments should be on-topic, non-commercial, and not contain abuse of any kind.
Comment Policy
Physics
Newton's law