| |
THE WORLD UNITES TO TACKLE
CLIMATE CHANGE
United Nations Conference On Human Environment (1972)
Vienna Convention For Protection Of Ozone Layer (1985)
Montreal Protocol (1987)
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (1988)
United Nations Conference on Environment And Development (1992) at Rio
Conference Of The Parties To The UNFCCC ( from 1995 )
Kyoto Protocol (1997)
Marrakesh Accord ( 2001 )
World Summit on Sustainable Development ( WSSD ), 2002
Global Environment Facility ( GEF )
Prototype Carbon Fund (PCF), World Bank, 2002
The total GHG Emission, 1994
In 1994, the aggregate GHG emissions from human activities in India
amounted to 793 million tons of carbon dioxide; 18 million tons of
methane and 0.178 million tons of Nitrous oxide; which constitutes
about 3% of global GHG emissions.
The contributions of the USA, Japan, Germany and UK to the global
emissions in 1994 were 20%, 5%, 4% and 2% respectively. However,
India’s per capita CO2e emissions were 0.87% tons of CO2 in 1994,
amounting to 4% of US per capita emissions, 8% of Germany, 9% of UK,
10% of Japan and 23% of Global average.
Some Basic Facts on Kyoto Protocol
There are Six Green House Gases:
(Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide, Hydro-Fluoro-Carbons, Per-
Fluoro-Carbons and Sulphur-Hexa-Floride)
which are Responsible for Global Warming
During 1992 Rio Earth Summit – the United Nations Framework
Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), to which India is also a
party,
who signed this multi-lateral agreement on 10 June 1992 and was the
38th
country to ratify the Convention on 1st November 1993.
A protocol to the UNFCCC, known as Kyoto Protocol, was adopted
during COP-3, in Dec 1997, which enjoins upon the developed country
parties to reduce their GHG emissions by a global average of 5.2%
below
the 1990 levels during 2008-12; which India acceded in August, 2002
and
come into force from 16th February, 2005. |
| |
The Clean
Development Mechanism
The Kyoto Protocol has brought out three mechanisms for GHG
emission abatement. They are :
1) Joint Implementation (JI), (which
allows countries to claim credit for emission reduction that arise
form investment in other industrialized countries, which result in a
transfer of emission reduction units' between countries )
2) Clean Development Mechanism (CDM),
(through which industrialized countries can finance mitigation
projects in
developing countries contributing to their sustainable development )
3) International Emissions Trading (ET)
(which permits countries to transfer parts of their 'allowed
emissions' - assigned amount units )
The CDM Process
All these mechanisms are market-based ones; the first two are
project based, where as the third one allows the developed countries
to
sell surplus emission of one country to another developed country.
CDM works between those countries who have agreed emissions
reduction targets, under UNFCCC (Annex-1) and those who have not I.e
non-annex countries or the bulk of developing world.
Out of the 3 Kyoto mechanism, CDM is the
only for the developing world, which encourages cleaner development
and bring infusion of
investments and technologies; which thus provides them an
opportunity to adopt cleaner technologies and be paid for emission
reductions.\ CDM undergoes through a project cycle involving 4
stages such as
(1) Project Development
(2) Validation and Registration
(3) ProjectMonitoring
(4) Verification, Certification and
Issuance of CERs.
|
