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The Kyoto Protocol - Success or Failure Waiting to Happen?

By Daniel Stouffer

Republish: EasyPublish™ Published: 20Jan2010 Word count: 535 Viewed: 1274 time(s) Get Free Content For Your Site

On the one hand the Kyoto Protocol can be viewed as one of the greatest achievements in the ongoing battle against the perils of global warming, yet on the other hand it may well become known as a spectacular failure when viewed through the annals of history.

Launched in the winter of 1997, the protocol was designed to establish a broad agreement between countries around the world to restrict emissions of harmful greenhouse gases. The very complex membership and separate ratification standards ensured that it took until early 2005 before the protocol itself even came into force. Negotiations were lengthy, complex and fractious and getting to that momentous day in 2005 proved a journey in itself.

Merely signing up to the Kyoto Protocol did not in itself carry any real weight. A signature to the agreement was little more than a glorified public relations exercise as the protocol only grew some teeth when a country agreed to ratify its conditions. Ratification ensured that the country would actively participate in reducing emissions against a specified target. Those who were unable to do so would need to engage in emissions trading, buying credits from participating countries which had been able to reduce their emissions beyond the specification.

As stated by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the sponsor of the Kyoto Protocol, the treaty aimed for "stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system." To this day, 183 parties have ratified the protocol with the latest major standout to sign up being Australia.

Why could the Kyoto Protocol be reviewed as a failure? For the concept to work, it needed to assess the problem as a global one and quite rightly so. There seemed little point in one particular country or a group of countries agreeing to reduce their emissions if another country did not or even increased theirs. The problem as a whole would be the same or worse.

The fact that the United States, by most standards one of the worst contributors to the problem, has refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol has almost doomed it, effectively to failure. We may add on to this the fact that emerging giants India and China put even more pressure on the very principles, as they are not obligated, within the protocol, to reduce greenhouse gas production as "developing countries."

China is about to overtake the United States in volume of emissions and between the two countries will account for the lion's share of dangerous greenhouse gas production and emission around the world. Some would argue that there seems no point in the other countries attempting to trade down their emissions if the largest culprits are not participating and may indeed even be exacerbating the issue.

While the Kyoto Protocol is not the be-all and end-all of efforts to contain carbon emissions, it can nevertheless be seen as a historic movement to focus attention on the issue. Within the United States as well as the United Kingdom other initiatives are afoot to actively reduce carbon emissions. The world will now wait until later in 2010 to truly understand the final resolutions that will guide the future Kyoto Protocol.

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