Tick Those Kyoto Boxes
7 October 2009
It is high time that certain rules and issues under the Kyoto Protocol get resolved if countries are to complete them by Copenhagen. Some of these have been discussed for two years or more and Bangkok needs to bring these to a close. After all, the more time spent talking about base year, for example, the less progress there is on discussing level of ambition.
ECO urges parties to tick these boxes in the three remaining days of Bangkok:
Aggregate target of at least -40% from 1990 by 2020
Developing countries are stepping up with their action and industrialised countries need to do the same. You made a pledge to limit warming to 2oC, remember?
Five-year commitment period
Shorter commitment periods mean matching targets to the latest science. Parties backing an eight-year commitment period will have to wait six years between the IPCC’s fifth assessment report and the start of commitment period three.
A mid-term review ending no later than 2015
To ensure that the best science is reflected as soon as possible, a review of commitments in the second commitment period would make sense, immediately following the IPCC’s report.
1990 base year
Come on Canada. Are you really going to hold up 191 countries on this issue just to try to “hide” your embarrassing emission increases since 1990?
Expressing quantified emission targets in percentages
Here again, Canada is holding up progress. Japan is the only other country to not know whether targets should be in percentage decreases or tonnage decreases. Japan’s government is barely a month old. What is Canada’s excuse?
As some Parties have commented, using existing Kyoto guidelines just make things easier. Resolving these here will make the road to Copenhagen not quite so steep.