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In December 1997 industrialised countries agreed to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases as a first step towards halting global climate change. They signed the Kyoto Protocol, which, once ratified, will be the first legally binding international agreement that sets targets for cutting greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol adopts the principle of burden-sharing with different commitments for North and South. Industrialised countries, as the main polluters of past decades, are the first to start cutting their emissions.

Initial overall emission cuts from industrialised countries will amount to emission reductions of 5.2% below 1990 levels by 2012; the EU target under the Protocol requires emission cuts of 8% compared to 1990 levels. However, the Protocol has not been fully ratified yet. In order to come into force, a minimum of 55 countries representing at least 55% of total emissions in 1990 need to enact legislation mapping out how they will meet the emission reduction targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol.

The Flexible Mechanisms
Despite the meagre emission reduction targets set in the Kyoto Protocol, governments shied away from relying on domestic actions and policies alone to meet their obligations. Instead, industrialised countries decided that they needed more flexibility to achieve national reduction targets and thus agreed to include three Flexible Mechanisms in the Kyoto Protocol. These three aides to achieving governmental commitments are ‘Emission Trading’, ‘Joint Implementation’ and the ‘Clean Development Mechanism’ (CDM).

Of these three, the CDM is of greatest concern to Fern because it opens the door to increases in the overall allowance of greenhouse gas emissions in industrialised countries and because of the decision to include carbon sinks as a project category eligible for credits in the CDM.

The thorny path to ratification
In the wake of the collapse of the key conference on climate change in 2000 – the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP6) in The Hague, the Netherlands – the US (which is responsible for a quarter of the world's carbon dioxide emissions) announced in March 2001 that it would not ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Despite this rebuff by the US administration, which subsequently pronounced the agreement ‘dead’, governments gathered at the resumed COP6bis in Bonn in July 2001 reached a political agreement on the rules for implementation of the Kyoto Protocol. Details of these rules were finalized at COP7 in Marrakech, Morocco, in November 2001 and the Protocol is now ready for ratification even in the absence of initial US participation. In order to meet the 55% of total emissions required for the Kyoto Protocol to enter into force, Russia's still outstanding ratification is required. In order to meet the 55% of total emissions, Russia and Central and Eastern European countries or Canada will have to ratify the protocol before it enters into force.

Decisions at COP6bis and COP7, which forged agreement on rules of implementation of the Kyoto Protocol, were widely hailed as a success for the international community against the US administration’s attempts at sabotage. However, viewed through the lens of forests and forest peoples, there was little reason to rejoice when governments decided to include carbon sinks as a project category eligible for credits in the CDM. Even worse, governments failed to put meaningful safeguards in place ensuring that environmentally or socially harmful projects were avoided. And last, the inclusion of carbon sink activities in the CDM may provide perverse incentives for the establishment of large-scale tree plantations because governments failed to distinguish between forests and tree plantations and refused to exclude the latter from being eligible under the CDM.