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In December 1997 Australia made an international commitment
in the Kyoto (Conference of the Parties COP3) to limit its
greenhouse gas emissions growth.
An emission of green house
gas which equates to nearly a 30 percent decrease from its
usual greenhouse projections.
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Australia, one of three
countries to be granted an increase on its emission
levels on its 1990 base.
The country won the
argument on the notion of 'differentiated targets'
based on a country's particular growth economic
circumstance.
In distinction, this equates
to developed and industrialized countries
cooperatively agreeing to lessen their combined
emissions of greenhouse gases by at least a minimum
of 5 percent compared to the 1990’s level.
The European Union (EU) has a separate internal
burden allotment agreement for the rationale of
meeting its commitments. Within this burden sharing
arrangement, other countries for example, may
augment emissions by a percentage of 25 to 27
percent respectively. |
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Other countries such as
Germany and Denmark, have each committed to
reduce their countries emissions by a
percentage of 21percent. |
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This internal burden sharing arrangement
allows the countries of the European Union, unlike seperate countries like the United States and
Australia, considerable flexibility in attaining its
Kyoto obligations.
Since the Kyoto agreement,
Australia has taken part in consecutive events of
COP4 to COP7.
The progress of the Kyoto Protocol
could amply be described as complex method with the
sheer magnitude of the commitment taken by each
country.
A negative blow for the Kyoto Protocol was
the withdrawal of United States in March 2001. |
In a proclamation by the former
President George W Bush, it summarized that the United
States would not sanction the Protocol as the country
believed the agreement to be “essentially flawed'.
The
country of the United States is accountable to around 25
percent of the globe's greenhouse carbon dioxide emissions.
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With the US out of the list of nations
who intend to ratify the agreement, it falls into the
remaining four major nation players as well as those
countries that support the protocol, including the nations
of the European Union, Japan, Russia and Canada to
strengthen the Kyoto Protocol and make sure it comes into
effect.
In the year 2002, during the last days of May and early
June, the European Union (EU) alongside the country of Japan
signed and ratified their respective countries role in the
Kyoto Protocol.
Not long after, the two remaining countries
of Russia and Canada followed suit by ratifying their
nations into the treaty in the end of that year. |
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This was witnessed during the World
Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. The
nations bound by the protocol agreed to provide the
obligatory threshold point for the Protocol to come in into
power, and all of this would be a norm by the end of 2002.
Even as Australia has not settled to ratify Kyoto it has set
in place an extensive series of procedures representing a $1
billion worth of investment, to make certain that the
dedication made at Kyoto can be met.
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