UN Climate Talks Agree Kyoto Compliance Rules
Date: 09-Dec-05
Country: CANADA
"The compliance mechanism has been agreed," British Environment Minister Margaret Beckett told reporters during talks among more than 90 ministers in Montreal on ways to step up the fight against global warming.
Details of how to enforce the Kyoto accord, which obliges many developed nations to cut emissions of heat-trapping gases, were the final chapter of a voluminous Kyoto rulebook adopted last week at the Nov. 28-Dec. 9 climate talks.
Under the compliance system, any country that overshoots its targets will have to make up the shortfall, and an extra 30 percent penalty, in the next period. Countries can also lose a right for trading emissions of greenhouse gases.
Saudi Arabia's call that each country's national legislation approve a measure to ensure compliance with Kyoto has been dropped. "That has gone away," Beckett said.
Such a measure would have taken years and threatened to have bogged down Kyoto, which seeks to curb emissions from fossil fuels burned in power stations, autos and factories blamed for warming the planet.
Saudi Arabia, the world's number one oil exporter, has long feared that Kyoto will promote a shift to renewable energies such as wind and solar power and so dent its economy.
Kyoto obliges about 40 nations to cut their emissions of heat-trapping gases by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 as part of a drive to prevent what could be catastrophic disruptions to the climate.
The United States, the world's largest producer of greenhouse gases, has pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol, saying emission caps threaten jobs and industry and instead backs voluntary targets.
Last week, the Montreal meeting agreed all 21 of 22 sections about rules governing Kyoto, excluding the compliance system.
