The Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto protocol: what is it?

The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement to fight against climate change adopted under the auspices of the UN in December 1997 in the Japanese city of the same name.

It requires 38 industrial countries to reduce their emissions into the atmosphere of six chemicals responsible for the phenomenon and qualified as “greenhouse gases”: carbon dioxide or carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide and three fluorinated gases.

The quotas apply on the average of the five years 2008-2012 which will be compared to 1990. They vary according to the country: minus 8% for the European Union to 15% for Russia, minus 0% for Japan, minus 6% for the United States, + 7% for Australia.

To enter into force, it must be ratified by 55 countries representing at least 55% of the CO2 emissions of industrial countries in 1990.

After the decision in March 2001 of the United States (36,1% of reference emissions, 25% of global emissions of CO2) not to ratify it, its survival depended on Russia (17,4% of reference emissions).

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The protocol, already ratified by 125 countries including 29 industrial countries representing 44,2% of reference emissions, could therefore come into force shortly after a new UN climate conference in Buenos Aires (6-17 December).

It provides for the opening of negotiations in 2005 on new reduction commitments from 2013 which could affect the South for the first time, which is currently exempt from any quantified obligation.

In the absence of developing countries, the effectiveness of the protocol is limited.

According to an expert from the International Energy Agency, Cédric Philibert, Kyoto should only reduce by around 3% the global greenhouse gas emissions expected in 2010.

Here is the full text of the Kyoto Protocol

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