The UNFCCC is a declaration of the need for action, but does not contain agreement on specific emission reductions. The Kyoto Protocol complements the UNFCCC, which sets more binding targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that have ratified the Protocol have committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. The protocol`s first commitment period ran from 2008 to 2012. The second commitment period runs from 2013 to 2020. Unlike the UNFCCC, the United States has never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, so the world`s largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions is excluded from the company. Kyoto Protocol, in its entirety Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, an international treaty, named after the Japanese city where it was adopted in December 1997, which aimed to reduce emissions of gases that contribute to global warming. The protocol, which has been in force since 2005, called for a 5.2% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in 41 countries plus the European Union compared to 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 “commitment period”. It has been widely hailed as the most important environmental treaty ever negotiated, although some critics have questioned its effectiveness. Employees of the U.S.
Department of Energy`s Energy Information Agency (EIA) reviewed six projections for U.S. carbon emissions through 2012, ranging from a cap that represents the “baseline scenario” or status quo to the reduction levels prescribed by the Protocol. U.S. CO2 emissions for 2012 range from about 1.25× 109 to 1.87 × 109 mt. When IPCC reports suggested that the stabilization target would not be sufficient to prevent dangerous anthropogenic disruption of the climate system, the UNFCCC contracting parties (governments) decided to formulate emission reduction commitments for developed countries in the form of a legal protocol, despite the problems they already had in stabilizing their emissions (e.B. Oberthür & Ott, 1999). Such a protocol to the UNFCCC was agreed in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, which is therefore called the Kyoto Protocol. If this Protocol is ratified, developed countries, individually or jointly, shall reduce their total greenhouse GAS emissions by at least 5 % compared to 1990 levels during the 2008-2012 commitment period (Article 3(1)).
The Kyoto Protocol recognized that developed countries are primarily responsible for the current high emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which can be attributed to more than 150 years of industrial activity. As a result, the protocol imposes a heavier burden on developed countries than on less developed countries. Under Kyoto, developed countries committed to reducing their annual carbon emissions, measured in six greenhouse gases, by an average of 5.2% by 2012 compared to 1990. This corresponds to a 29% reduction in values that would have occurred otherwise. However, the protocol only became international law after more than half of the period from 1990 to 2012. By that time, global emissions had increased significantly. Some countries and regions, including the European Union, were on track to meet or exceed their Kyoto targets by 2011, but other large countries fell woefully short of expectations. And the two largest emitters of all – the United States and China – produced more than enough additional greenhouse gases to cancel out any reductions made by other countries during the Kyoto period. Globally, emissions increased by almost 40% between 1990 and 2009, according to the Dutch Environment Agency. The United States, which had ratified the original Kyoto Agreement, withdrew from the Protocol in 2001. The U.S. viewed the deal as unfair because it asked developed countries to limit emissions reductions only, and it believed it would hurt the U.S.
economy. As of May 2013, 191 countries and one regional economic organization (EC) had ratified the agreement, accounting for more than 61.6% of the 1990 emissions of Annex I countries. [97] One of the 191 states that have ratified the Protocol – Canada – has renounced the Protocol. While the first scientific hypothesis of an increased greenhouse effect by human activities was formulated as early as the end of the 19th century, climate change did not enter the international political agenda until the end of the 20th century (e.B. Bolin, 1993; Jäger and O`Riordan, 1996). Alarmed by the evidence of global warming presented by scientists since the 1960s, governments called for further research in the early 1980s, which eventually led to the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) within the framework of the United Nations (UN) in 1988. .
