Weathering the Political and Environmental Climate of the Kyoto Protocol

Abstract

When Canada’s Minister of the Environment, David Anderson, notified the United Nations (UN) on 17 December 2002 that Canada would ratify the UN Framework Agreement on Climate Change, known best as the Kyoto Protocol, Canada joined nearly 100 countries to do so. Together, these countries represented about 40 per cent of the 1990 emissions, still some distance from the 55 per cent threshold necessary for the UN Agreement to come into effect. A day earlier, then Prime Minister Jean Chretien had signed the 1997 treaty limiting greenhouse gas emissions at a ceremony in Ottawa after the House of Commons had approved the treaty. Because the United States, which is responsible for more than 36 per cent of all emissions, had rejected the treaty, there was great hope that Russia would soon ratify the protocol. Once Russia became a signatory to the agreement, it and all other signatories would have committed themselves to reducing greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent below 1990 rates by 2012. In Canada, that necessitated a reduction of 20 to 30 per cent from current levels. However, Russia, like the United States and Australia, has not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol and, without Russia, which accounts for 17.4 per cent of emissions, the Protocol may be in serious trouble.