The Kyoto Protocol entered into force ten years ago and it is reason to celebrate. To the official UNFCC website, ” Countries with targets under the Kyoto Protocol have collectively exceeded their original ambition early analysis shows. “
The achievement, which comes as the world on Monday marks the 10th anniversary of the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, underlines what can be achieved via international cooperative action.
The news also comes as countries or Parties meeting in Geneva this week produced the negotiating text for the 2015 universal Paris agreement—the next key chapter in humanity’s quest to chart a defining path to keep the world and its people under a 2 degree C temperature rise.
(…) During its first commitment period, from 2008 to 2012, 37 industrialized countries and the European Community committed to take a leading role in climate action by reducing their emissions to an average of just over five percent against 1990 levels.
The UNFCCC secretariat is expected to complete final accounting for the first phase later this year or early next year.
But according to information submitted by Parties to the Kyoto Protocol in 2014, their total greenhouse emissions at the end of that first commitment period were 22.6 per cent lower than the 1990 base year.
“We cannot link all these emissions reductions directly to the Kyoto Protocol, but it clearly played an important role in catalyzing this promising trend which has led to a collective and very welcome ‘over-achievement’,” said Ms Figueres. “Paris will not solve climate change at a pen stroke.
But similarly it must trigger a world-wide over-achievement and a clear sense of direction that can restore the natural balance of emissions on planet Earth,” she said.