Clearer skies- Kyoto protocol in place

By Vijay Kumar

The Kyoto Protocol on Global Warming officially went into effect yesterday with 34 industrialized countries agreeing to take steps to control widespread pollution.

The treaty was actually agreed at a 1997 UN conference in Kyoto, Japan by 159 countries that are members of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

However, it took almost seven years to get the deal ratified so that it could take effect. A total of 141 nations have approved the pact.

The Kyoto Protocol commits the industrialized countries that have ratified it to reduce the amount of six greenhouse gases

- carbon dioxide (CO2),
- methane (CH4),
- nitrous oxide (N2O),
- hydro fluorocarbons (HFCs),
- perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and
- sulphur hexafluoride (SF6).)

by 5.2 per cent of 1990 levels, during the five-year period 2008-2012.

Carbon dioxide and these five other gases can trap heat in the atmosphere and are blamed for rising global temperatures that are melting glaciers, raising ocean levels and threatening potentially damaging climate change.

Meanwhile, Australia and the US, the world's biggest polluter, have pulled out saying Kyoto is too expensive and wrongly omits developing nations.

The US never signed the Kyoto Protocol but 187 other countries did. The US position on the protocol is said to lessen its ability to reach its goals and deprives the Earth and its species from the benefits it can provide. The US alone emits one fifth of all the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere that are gradually turning the earth turn into a greenhouse. The convention signed in Kyoto in April of 1997 was almost forgotten when US President George W. Bush declared it was "unacceptable" in 2001.

The Kyoto Protocol urges industrialized countries to limit their emission of gases that cause global warming, in particular of carbon dioxide (CO2). The Protocol also requires a restriction on the use of fossil energy resources, especially oil. According to the UN, 80 percent of the carbon in the atmosphere is created by the use of fossil energy resources in transportation, heating and industry. The US emits 36.1 percent of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere; Australia emits only 2.1 percent. Both refuse to ratify the protocol in order not to lose their fossil waste resources.

Clean energy is all set to undergo a major expansion worldwide as the Kyoto Protocol came into force. The industrialized countries would need to accelerate the introduction of renewables to meet these requirements, as well as reduce energy consumption by promoting efficiency of energy end use, and enhance the absorption of carbon dioxide in trees through greater afforestation.

India has already ratified the Kyoto Protocol on 26th August 2002. India is not required to reduce emission of Green House Gases (GHG) under the Protocol under which basically the developed countries are required to reduce emissions of GHG by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 level by 2012.

And that should clear our sky.