On this day 16th of February in the year 2005, the Kyoto Protocol finally became international law. It was an agreement reached at the third Conference of the Parties (COP) in December 97, in Japanese city of Kyoto. It had called for rich industrialised countries to cut their emissions by a certain small amount in the period 2008 to 2012…
But before we get bogged down in the details, let’s go back to the beginning. When the climate issue arrived on the agenda in 1988, small and developing nations said “this is caused by rich countries. They have to take the lead in sorting it out.” And this was relatively uncontroversial in principle, at least. And so in 1992, you get the notion of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” and some sort of loose talk about technology transfer, etc. However – and this is crucial – the proposal to have targets and timetables for rich countries to reduce their emissions in the text of the climate treaty, due to be signed in Rio was opposed successfully.
And it was opposed successfully by our old friend, the United States of America, who basically said (and I paraphrase), “If targets and timetables are in, we will not come to Rio and you will have a worthless treaty.” So Kyoto was the first attempt, the first of many, to try to put targets and timetables back in. It was full of loopholes, famously, the Australian land clearing one (by the way, Australia got an emissions reduction target that allowed it to increase its emissions). And it also was supposed to kickstart carbon trading, something the Europeans had been sceptical about
In 2001, the new administration of George W. Bush had pulled the US out of Kyoto process. And the following year, Australia had done its little “me too” act, under its deeply inadequate Prime Minister John Howard.
Kyoto languished in limbo for years, and only got through, because Russia wanted to join the World Trade Organisation. And this was the quid pro quo. After the Russian Duma had ratified this, 90 days later, Kyoto became law for all the good that it did, which was virtually none.
Why this matters
We need to remember these histories. So we remember who’s to blame – sometimes it’s the actors, sometimes it’s the nature of a given process. We need to remember that the “sausage machine” of international law has not saved us, and is very, very unlikely to save “us.”
What happened next?
Well, Kyoto was always supposed to be replaced by something else bigger and better. And this was supposed to happen in Copenhagen. In 2009. It didn’t. The shards of agreement got swept up and glued together in a new pisspot called the Paris Agreement, which is basically the old Japanese “pledge and review” proposal, reheated. And then, six years after Paris, nations met in Glasgow, without their enhanced ambition statements for the most part. Meanwhile, carbon dioxide continues to accumulate.