Kyoto Protocol 101

In 1997, with opinion finally cementing around the fact that climate change is real and already occurring, many of the world's governments came to an agreement on climate action. This agreement in known as the Kyoto Protocol and it binds those industrialised nations that ratify the Protocol to reducing their emissions by an average of five per cent by the period 2008-2012.

Loopholes in the Protocol

Despite this being quite a modest target, there is also a get-out-clause. Countries that are not able to achieve these modest targets are allowed to "compensate" by buying offsets, either credits from countries that have not used all of their emission allowance, or by investing in "cleaner" energy technology in the global South, or by putting money into forestry or soil conservation (carbon sinks). Greenpeace estimates have shown that the introduction of these offset mechanisms will allow Northern countries to increase their emissions by an average of 0.3 per cent over 1990 levels instead of decreasing them by over five per cent.

Carbon sinks generating carbon credits through afforestation, reforestation and forest management are amongst the largest loopholes incorporated into the Kyoto Protocol. The generation of carbon sink credits appears in four articles of the Protocol:

• Article 3.3 requires the obligatory reporting and monitoring of carbon stocks within a country with emission targets
• Article 3.4 provides an option to account for increases in carbon storage through forest management
• Article 6 describes the creation of Joint Implementation one of the “flexibility mechanisms” that allow countries with binding targets to buy carbon credits generated in other countries with binding targets.
• Article 12 describes the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), another flexible mechanism which allows trading of carbon credits generated in any other country.

These articles assume that all carbon is measurable and identical, that, for example, a tonne of carbon stored in trees is equivalent to a tonne of carbon released from fossil fuels into the atmosphere. In the carbon accounting books, such a transaction does appear to offer the possibility of being carbon neutral, but in reality such a transaction still increases the amount of carbon in the atmospheric or ‘active’ carbon pool at a time where all efforts ought to be directed towards avoiding any increases. For more information see Carbon Sinks 101.

Carbon Sinks in the CDM

As explained earlier, the CDM allows Northern countries (known as Annex 1 countries) to finance projects in the South (such as the creation of a tree plantation) with the aim of mitigating GHG emissions in return for credits. These credits can then be used to allow additional GHG emissions in the Annex 1 country. Industrialised countries can buy CDM carbon sink credits worth up to one per cent of their 1990 emissions. To give this some context it means that Annex 1 countries could on paper stay within their Kyoto targets whilst in actual fact releasing an extra 145 million tonnes of CO₂ per year into the atmosphere.

Another way to look at what this loophole means is in terms of the amount of land required to plant that many trees. As with all carbon measurements, calculations are hard to do, but it would probably require upwards of 10 million hectares per year to generate all possible CDM carbon sink credits. To put that in context, it is the equivalent of covering the whole of Equatorial Guinea in plantations, 4 times per year, every year that the Kyoto Protocol exists.

For more information about the problems with the Kyoto Protocol click here.

For more information about the problems with Plantations click here.