Kyoto Protocol

From: WWF website.
I hope this article find useful to all environmental activist. Please, we are heating up, do help our planet.

Right after United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - UNFCCC - was approved in Earth Summit 1992, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, all the convention parties started negotiating to form exact regulation on controlling the greenhouse gas (GHG) emission.

The 3rd highest meeting authority on UNFCCC called Conference of Parties 3 -- COP - was held in Kyoto, Japan, and agreed to adopt a set of rules called Kyoto Protocol. It is believed to be the most approaching way to reduce the GHG emission from all the parties of the convention. It is set on December 12, 1997; three years after the convention on climate change started to regulate the parties on how should they reduce the emission.

As it is agreed, (http://untreaty.un.org/) we can understand the protocol as a set of rules that order the parties to get certain agreed and united goals. In a protocol all the parties normatively bonded to follow the inside regulation. Usually the protocol is set to sharpening the previous regulation (e.g.: the convention).

The COP 1 and COP 2 found almost no important agreement to reduce the GHG emission. COP 3 was believed as fighting field between ANNEX I who has emitted the GHG longer before the NON ANNEX I did. The developed country's agenda is not to bring the energy consumption out of their country's development; meanwhile mostly their energy resources still are generated from fossil fuel which is placing the biggest portion for GHG emission. To accommodate these importances between two big gaps, the Kyoto Protocol is the only international agreement to committing in reducing the GHG with clearer mechanism and legally-binding.

In Kyoto Protocol has agreed that all the ANNEX I countries are obligated to reduce their GHG emission averagely at 5.2% from their baseline emission in 1990. The year of 1990 has accepted to be the baseline year to count the GHG emission basis as written in the protocol. For the NON ANNEX I countries the GHG reduction is not an obligatory but participation is still yet needed, the principal is known as "common but differentiated responsibility". The Kyoto Protocol rules all those matters for the first commitment from 2008 until 2012.

Three mechanisms to reduce the GHG emission under the Kyoto Protocol are:
1. Joint Implementation (JI), a mechanism that controls the developed countries to work together among them to get credit of the GHG emission reduction which is called ERU (Emission Reduction Unit).
2. Emission Trading (ET), a mechanism that allows a developed country to sell their GHG emission reduction credit to another developed country, since the seller has reached over the targeted emission reduction. The credit point is called AAU (Amount Assigned Unit).
3. Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a mechanism that possibly involving the developing countries to reduce the GHG emission from the cooperation with developed country. The emission reduction credit will be on behalf of the developed country who invests the project. The additional value for the developing country is the supports to the sustainable development, besides CDM is the only mechanism that allows the developing countries to get involved in GHG emission reduction under the Kyoto Protocol. The credit point produced from this mechanism is called CER (Certified Emission Reduction).

The three mechanisms above are defining the flexibility mechanism to reach the target of reducing the GHG emission for the ANNEX I countries.
There are two requirements for the Kyoto Protocol to be entered into force, first is the protocol should be ratified minimally by 55 countries to the convention on climate change, and second the total amount of GHG emission of the ANNEX I countries who ratify the protocol minimally should be 55% to their total emission in 1990. The history shows in May 23, 2002, Iceland ratified the protocol means the first requirement has been passed. Then in November 18, 2004, Russia finally ratified the protocol to fulfill the second requirement and has reached over 55% to be 61.79% of the total amount, thus has made the protocol effectively entered into force 90 days later after Russian's ratification, it was on February 16, 2005.