ABSTRACT

The Kyoto Protocol provides the detailed guidelines and policy mechanisms that allow governments to take more specific and measurable action to combat climate change in line with the objective of the Framework Convention. The most outstanding aspect of the protocol is that it commits industrialized countries to legally, individually binding targets to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol also details a series of rules and project-based mechanisms, such as the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, through which country parties might collaborate to meet their emission-reduction targets. The protocol also provides for the trading of emissions among Annex I parties as a means of achieving emissions reductions. Despite these provisions for collaboration among parties and for emissions trading, the protocol requires contracting parties to put in place strong domestic measures to reduce greenhouse emissions. Only parties to the convention can become parties to the protocol, but this involves a separate ratification process.