FROM GLOBAL POWER POLITICS TO RESPONSIBLE COLLECTIVE GOVERNANCE
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momentum behind the issue at the time, the fact that the UNFCCC was agreed upon at all can be regarded as a considerable achievement. The agreement set an ultimate objective of ‘avoiding dangerous interference in the climate system’, defined as aiming to stabilize concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the atmosphere, and listed policies and measures countries might adopt to achieve this end. Acknowledging the vast differences in contributions to the problem, the convention established the principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibility’3 and recognized that developing countries were not yet in a position to assume their own obligations. The commitments of developing countries towards tackling the issue were made contingent on the receipt of financial resources and technology transfer from industrialized countries that were meant to be ‘additional’ to existing aid budgets. Attention then turned to how to realize the general nature of the commitments contained in the UNFCCC. With scientific assessments of the severity of climate change becoming increasingly common and awareness growing of the inadequacy of existing policy responses, momentum built for a follow-up to the convention.4 The UNFCCC’s built-in requirement that the parties review the adequacy of parties’ commitments in light of evolving science led to the adoption of the 1995 Berlin Mandate. The COP agreed to negotiate a new set of ‘quantified emissions limitations and reduction obligations’ (QELROs) – or legally binding targets for industrialized countries to reduce GHG emissions. The Kyoto Protocol, concluded in 1997, was the outcome of this. Signed by more than 150 countries, it binds 38 industrialized (Annex I) countries to reduce GHG emissions by an average of 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels during the period 2008–2012. It fixes differentiated targets for industrialized countries while setting in train a process to further elaborate joint implementation schemes, set up an emissions trading scheme (ETS) and create the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The process for finalizing the rules and operational details of the Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon at COP 4 in 1998 as part of the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. In November 2000 parties met in The Hague at COP 6 in an effort to complete these negotiations, but they failed amid a growing rift in particular between the EU and the US.5 Having lobbied hard for including market-based mechanisms that would allow industrialized countries maximum flexibility, the US walked away from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001. As discussed below, the US refused to ratify Kyoto partly because its economic competitors in the developing world were not required by the protocol to reduce their own emissions. Without US involvement, many assumed the inevitable demise
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