Given the COP15 Conference taking place in Denmark this December, it seemed appropriate to highlight the Kyoto Protocol, the international greenhouse gas reduction agreement that is to be succeeded by a new compromise in Copenhagen.

• The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on December 11, 1997 and entered into force on February 16, 2005. (Under the Protocol, countries’ actual emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the trades carried out. The UN Climate Change Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, keeps an international transaction log to verify that transactions are consistent with the rules of the Protocol).
• 184 Parties of the Convention have ratified its Protocol to date. (Complete list here).
• Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.

1. Emissions trading – known as “the carbon market”
2. Clean development mechanism (CDM)
3. Joint implementation (JI).

• The Kyoto Protocol is generally seen as an important first step towards a truly global emission reduction regime that will stabilize GHG emissions, and provides the essential architecture for any future international agreement on climate change.
• By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly indicated are needed (hence COP 15).

Source: United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)