Fighting Climate Change
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and its Kyoto Protocol provide the global institutional framework for tackling climate change, defining the objective of the efforts, as well as the key principles for reaching it.
One of the key principles of the UNFCCC is that of "common but differentiated responsibilities", which requires developed countries to take the lead in the fight against climate change and its impacts. By differentiating between developed and developing countries, the UNFCCC recognises that developed, industrialised countries are responsible for most of the current build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and have the financial and technological resources to reduce their emissions.
The UNFCCC obliges its parties to establish national programmes for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and to submit regular reports. It also required the industrialised countries among the parties - but not developing countries - to stabilise their greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000, in which they succeeded as a group. The UNFCCC parties meet annually to review progress and discuss further measures, and a number of global monitoring and reporting mechanisms are in place to keep track of greenhouse gas emissions.
The Kyoto Protocol
Governments knew that the efforts of the UNFCCC would not be enough to seriously tackle climate change. On 11 December 1997, they took a further step and adopted a protocol to the UNFCCC in the Japanese town of Kyoto: the Kyoto Protocol. Building on the UNFCCC framework, the protocol sets legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions from 38 industrialised countries originally, including all Member States of the European Union except Cyprus and Malta, as well as from the EU as one single body (known as the EU-15, since it then had only 15 member countries.) It also introduces innovative market-based implementation mechanisms - the so-called Kyoto flexible mechanisms - aimed at keeping the cost of curbing emissions low.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, industrialised countries are required to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases (CO2, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride) by around 5% below the 1990 level during the first Kyoto Protocol "commitment period" from 2008 to 2012. A five-year commitment period was chosen rather than a single target year to smooth out annual fluctuations in emissions due to uncontrollable factors such as weather. There are no emission targets for developing countries.
The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on 16 February 2005. As of June 2007, 172 states and the European Community had ratified the protocol. Two countries that originally signed the treaty have not ratified: the US has rejected the protocol, whereas Australia has decided not to ratify it. This means that 36 developed countries plus the EU-15 are committed to reaching their Kyoto targets.
[More informations: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/climat/home_en.htm]
