EU Fulfills Commitment and Calls on Other Nations to Support Kyoto

The European Union and each of its member states have ratified the Kyoto Protocol as of May 31, taking a significant step toward the EU's commitment to enabling the international climate protection agreement to enter into force before the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August/September 2002. The ratification papers of the EU and the 15 member states, including Germany, were deposited at United Nations headquarters in New York in a ceremony on May 31.

The EU took the opportunity to call on other parties to ratify the protocol as soon as possible and to again urge the United States to participate. "All countries have to act, but the industrialized countries have to take the lead," EU Environment Commissioner Margot Wallström said. "Climate change can only be tackled effectively through a multilateral process. I urge our partners both in the developed and in the developing countries to also ratify the Kyoto Protocol soon."

Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer reiterated Germany's commitment to having the protocol enter into force. "The putting into force of the protocol represents a test of the sense of responsibility of the international community and its ability to shape globalization politically. Climate protection and sustainable energy supplies are among the greatest challenges for humanity in the 21st Century."

A Challenging Goal
On June 4, Japan also ratified the protocol, named for the Japanese city in which it was signed in 1997. But the parties that have ratified still do not account for at least 55% of the carbon dioxide emissions of industrialized countries in 1990, the threshold required in order for the protocol to enter into force. The US, which accounts for about 25% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions, withdrew its support of the Kyoto Protocol. However, the US government recently acknowledged for the first time that human actions are mostly responsible for climate change. The Environmental Protection Agency's Climate Action Report 2002, submitted to the United Nations, states that "greenhouse gases are accumulating in the Earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing global mean surface air temperature and subsurface ocean temperature to rise."

Reducing Greenhouse Gases
The Kyoto Protocol calls for industrialized nations to reduce emissions of gases like carbon dioxide, which are responsible for global warming. More than 6000 representatives from 180 countries have agreed on the rules for implementation.

The protocol calls for an average reduction of greenhouse-gas emissions in industrialized countries of 5.2% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. Germany has pledged to reduce its emissions 21% below 1990 levels between the years 2008 and 2012. Already, Germany has reduced its emissions of greenhouse gases 18.7% below 1990 levels; more specifically, emissions of carbon dioxide have been reduced by 15.5%.

Learn more about the Kyoto Protocol in our E² - Energy and the Environment InFocus

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