Nearly seven years after being agreed upon, the Kyoto protocol has finally come into force from February 16. The protocol is intended to reduce air pollution from greenhouse gases, rekindling hopes that the world will avert major ecological disaster due to global warming.
It paves the way for an entirely new form of international commerce by way of carbon trading. Many believe that the emerging business, which will revolve around the trading of harmful gas emission reduction credits, will be much bigger than most other single commodities on the market today.Environment-conscious developing countries like India are among those looking for trading opportunities. Futures trading in carbon credits has already been on for some time now, while spot marketing has just begun. It is expected to acquire proper shape by 2008.
Though the Kyoto accord has been signed by 141 countries, it essentially binds only 38 industrialised nations to lower their emissions by 5.2 per cent from their 1990 levels by 2012. The 38 nations account for 55 per cent of the global emissions of six key ozone-depleting greenhouse gases. Developing countries have been exempted from emission cut commitments.There is a degree of scepticism about the actual beneficial impact of Kyoto on two counts. First, and truly foremost, is the refusal of the world’s two major polluters—the US and Australia—to participate in it.
While the US produces about a quarter of all the world’s greenhouse gases, Australia generates the most per capita emissions. Despite claims by the Bush administration that it is pursuing a domestic clean environment programme that is as good as Kyoto, the country’s harmful emissions today are some 15 per greater than they were in 1990.The other cause for concern, strangely enough, is on account of those developed countries which have willingly taken on emission reduction commitments. Since none of them wants to put its own industries at a disadvantage, they have set themselves generous emission reduction quotas.Optimists feel that both these concerns can be addressed in the next round of negotiations for thrashing out a successor to Kyoto in the post-2012 era. Hopefully, the rapidly growing pressure on the US and Australia to join the global mainstream will work.
Under the new economic order, nobody can plough a lonely furrow for long. So far as the other polluters are concerned, they may get emboldened to fix more realistic reduction quotas once the carbon trading market becomes fully operational.Fortunately, most of the developing countries do not have much to worry about. The largely agro-forestry-based economies of the least developed, slow-growing countries are, in any case, negligible polluters.As for fast-growing countries like India, China, Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, they have already slashed their emission rates through improved transport, forestry, and other policies.
But, regardless of all this, the industrialised nations need to realise that they are the ones who polluted Planet Earth the most and they must ultimately pay for putting in place a cleaner development mechanism.
