2000 WILL BE CRITICAL YEAR FOR REVERSING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS TRENDS
Press Release
ENV/DEV/528
UNEP/51
2000 WILL BE CRITICAL YEAR FOR REVERSING GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS TRENDS
19991108NAIROBI, 8 November (UNEP) -- The fate of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from industrialized countries will be determined over the next twelve months, Klaus Toepfer, Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), said here today.
Speaking after the conclusion of the Fifth Session of the Conference of the Parties of the Climate Change Convention in Bonn (COP 5), Toepfer praised the political commitment expressed by the over 60 ministers present in Bonn and said ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by 2002 is still achievable. He also repeated his view that the regions that will suffer most from climate change impacts are those where the poorest of the poor live. "Fighting poverty must therefore still be our highest priority", he said. "At the same time, it is also imperative to change consumption patterns, transport structure, and lifestyles in the industrialized world."
In Bonn last week, Ministers and officials from 166 governments set an aggressive timetable for completing the outstanding details of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol by November 2000, thus triggering its early ratification by governments. The deadline for completing the Protocol is the Sixth Session of the Conference of the Parties of the Convention (COP 6), which has been set for 13-24 November 2000 in The Hague.
"The deadline for finalizing the details of the Kyoto Protocol at The Hague conference in November 2000 must be respected", said Toepfer. "Only if the international community maintains and intensifies the political momentum for making the Protocol fully operational can we be sure that it will enter into force in time for industrialized countries to achieve their emissions targets."
"As we saw when the 1992 Rio Earth Summit was set as the deadline for adopting the Climate Change Convention, deadline pressure is often essential for reaching difficult political agreements", continued Toepfer. "A successful outcome in The Hague is vital for ensuring ratification of the Protocol by enough countries for entry into force in time for the Rio Plus 10 conference in 2002", he said.
- 2 - Press Release ENV/DEV/528 UNEP/51 8 November 1999
Under the Kyoto Protocol, rich countries are to reduce their emissions of six greenhouse gases by 5% by the period 2008-2012. However, many of the rules and mechanisms for measuring and implementing emissions cuts have not yet been agreed. They are to be finalized in The Hague by COP 6.
The urgency of taking action to address climate change is demonstrated by UNEP's newly published Global Environment Outlook (GEO) 2000, an assessment of the status of the world's environment at the beginning of the new millennium. The GEO 2000 states that global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a new high of nearly 23,900 million tonnes in 1996 and that emissions continue to mount. It says the average annual increase over the past decade has been 1.3 per cent or nearly 300 million tonnes a year.
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