Key pledges enshrined in Kyoto deal

Date: 13/05/1999

By Renée Cordes

MORE than 80 parties signed up to a legally binding agreement to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases at the end of the Kyoto climate change conference in 1977.

The accord will enter into force 90 days after it has been ratified by at least 55 signatories to the convention, most probably in 2000, and will be reviewed periodically from 2005 onwards.

Under the agreement, developed countries pledged to reduce their collective emissions of six greenhouse gases by at least 5&percent; by 2012 at the latest, with the EU committing itself to an 8&percent; cut. A ten-year plan for putting those pledges into action was agreed at a meeting in Buenos Aires last November and progress is due to be reviewed again at another conference this autumn.

The Kyoto agreement seeks to reverse a 150-year-long world-wide increase in greenhouse gas emissions which has prompted fears of a dramatic change in the earth's climate as a result of global warming.

Political leaders said at the time when the accord was agreed that it would prevent a “dangerous” man-made interference with the world's weather patterns.

However, under the terms of the agreement, some countries with low levels of emissions, such as Norway, will actually be allowed to increase their output of harmful gases.

The Kyoto agreement gives countries a certain degree of flexibility in how to make and measure their emissions reductions.

It also calls for the establishment of an international 'emissions trading' regime, to regulate the buying and selling of 'credits' between industrialised countries which want to buy the right to pollute from others which have undershot their targets. But it leaves open the question of who would do the trading: governments, industry, or both.

In addition, the protocol establishes a 'clean development mechanism' which would allow developed countries which finance clean-energy projects in their developing counterparts to receive credits for doing so.

However, signatories to the accord still have to agree on guidelines for these various schemes.