Marrakesh Accords

Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.

The Kyoto mechanisms are:

• Emissions trading – known as “the carbon market" 

• Clean development mechanism (CDM)

• Joint implementation (JI).

The mechanisms help stimulate green investment and help Parties meet their emission targets in a cost-effective way.

Monitoring emission targets

Under the Protocol, countries’actual emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the trades carried out.

Registry systems track and record transactions by Parties under the mechanisms. The UN Climate Change Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, keeps an international transaction log to verify that transactions are consistent with the rules of the Protocol.

Reporting is done by Parties by way of submitting annual emission inventories and national reports under the Protocol at regular intervals.

A compliance system ensures that Parties are meeting their commitments and helps them to meet their commitments if they have problems doing so.

The Kyoto Protocol, like the Convention, is also designed to assist countries in adapting to the adverse effects of climate change. It facilitates the development and deployment of techniques that can help increase resilience to the impacts of climate change.

The Adaptation Fund was established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is financed mainly with a share of proceeds from CDM project activities.

The Kyoto Protocol is generally seen as an important first step towards a truly global emission reduction regime that will stabilize GHG emissions, and provides the essential architecture for any future international agreement on climate change.

By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly indicated are needed.

Copenhagen Сlimate Тalks

COP15 was the fifteenth 'Conference of the Parties' (thus, COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The conference began on December 7 and ran through to December 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The COP is the highest body of the UNFCCC and consists of environment ministers who meet once a year to discuss the convention’s developments. It was attended by 192 nations with 115 heads of government in attendance.

Ahead of the COP15 conference, the official Denmark website stated that the "the goals of the climate change convention are to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous man-made climate changes. This stabilization must occur in such a way as to give the ecosystems the opportunity to adapt naturally. This means that food safety must not be compromised, and that the potential to create sustainable social and economic development must not be endangered." It was widely agreed that there was little prospect of reaching final agreement on a post-Kyoto agreement at the COP15 meeting. Central to the prospects of reaching an agreement at COP15 was whether the developed Annex I countries, which have emitted the bulk of the human-induced carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere, agree to deep binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.

However, the conference failed to agree on a binding legal replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, with differences on key issues such as the magnitude of emissions reduction targets for developed countries, the nature of commitments from major developing countries, financing adaptation and technology transfer.

Answer the questions about the text and translate the text in writing.

A

1. What is the Kyoto Protocol?

2. What does the Kyoto Protocol require?

3. How are emission targets met?

4. What happens if a country fails to reach its Kyoto emissions target?

B

1. What are the potential barriers to a global deal?

2. What happens to industrial nations that fail to meet their Kyoto targets?

3. If there are so many industries and communities doing good work, why don’t we just rely on voluntary action to reduce emissions?

C

1. Will Kyoto force governments to divert money away from health care and other important priorities?

2. Is shifting to nuclear power a good way to reduce emissions and fight climate change?