An Introduction to the Kyoto Protocol
During the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, an international treaty was signed - the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — in order to consider ways of addressing global warming. In 1997, this treaty was amended to create the Kyoto Protocol, the key tenet of which is legally binding emissions reductions for Parties, designed to ultimately reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases thought to contribute to global warming and accelerated climate change. This was further refined in 2002 with the adoption of the Marrakech Accords, which served to operationalise many general directives and marked the beginning of real implementation.
Essentially, the Kyoto Protocol seeks to control the following basket of six greenhouse gases in order to manage climate change effects. This basket uses the global warming potential (GWP) of carbon dioxide as a base unit, and measures relative warming effects of other gases. This data has been provided by the IPCC Second Assessment Report in 1995.
| Greenhouse gas | Chemical symbol | Global Warming Potential* |
|---|---|---|
| Carbon Dioxide | CO2 | 1 |
| Methane | CH4 | 21 (revised to 23) |
| Nitrous Oxide | N20 | 310 |
| Hydrofluorocarbons | HFC | 140 - 11,700 |
| Perflurorocarbons | PFC | 6,500 - 9,200 |
| Sulphur hexafluoride | SF6 | 23,900 |
* 100-year GWP from IPCC, 1995
Reductions in greenhouse gases may thus be obtained via reducing levels of PFC emissions from aluminium smelting, methane flaring at landfills, investment in renewables to displace carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuel power generation, or incineration of waste industrial gases such as HFC-23, which is typically released into the atmosphere as a non-toxic chemical.
Industrialized countries are required to compile a national inventory of these greenhouse gases in order to assess their progress towards reducing emissions, while projects which generate carbon credits for sale do so via the displacement or reduction of such gases.