Is The Kyoto Protocol a Failure of Political Will?

The Kyoto Protocol is still considered as among the greatest achievements in the initiatives to curtail global warming, although it can be a spectacular failure.

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.

Signing up to the Kyoto Protocol did not place enough bearing. When a country agreed to ratify Kyoto Protocol's conditions, it is then that it would actually come into force, and merely signing it did not mean anything. Ratification of the Protocol ensured that a country will participate actively in greenhouse gas emissions reduction. 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.

According to the Kyoto Protocol sponsor, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, this treaty aimed to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in air at a level that would not interfere with the natural 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. It is oblivious to believe that a few countries agreeing to reduce emissions and sign a Protocol would solve the problem, when other countries which did not might just even increase their emissions. 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.


------

Sustainability Resource Planning (SRP) offers solutions for carbon emissions & refrigerant gas tracking, energy efficiency, sustainable asset management, and water conservation. Increased regulations to reduce greenhouse gases (GHGs) will cause significant challenges and will impact business operations, brand management, fiscal accountability, and risk mitigation strategies. Learn more at http://www.verisae.com/articles