Implementation of the Kyoto protocol

The Rio Earth summit in 1992 has been the starting point of an international awareness about the global risk of climatic change. At this occasion, the richest countries committed themselves to stabilize their greenhouse gas emissions and to reach by the year 2000 an emissions level equivalent to the one of 1990. The Kyoto protocol in 1997 has permitted to convert this will into juridically constraining quantitative commitments. In 2005, Russia ratified the protocol while in 2001 the USA refused to do so. Because the commitments signed are ambitious, flexibility mechanisms have been implemented: 'emission permits' (emissions trading), 'joint implementation' allowing the investments abroad for greenhouse gases abatement in another developed country, and 'clean development mechanisms' when investments are made in a developing country. The Marrakech conference of December 2001 has permitted to fix up the eligibility criteria of projects belonging to the joint implementation and clean development mechanisms. The effective implementation of these mechanisms still raises technical difficulties to evaluate and measure the effective abatement of greenhouse gas emissions. (J.S.)