EVERYDAY SCIENCE

Detailed explanation-1: -The Kyoto Protocol also established a rigorous monitoring, review and verification system, as well as a compliance system to ensure transparency and hold Parties to account. Under the Protocol, countries’ actual emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the trades carried out.

Detailed explanation-2: -The Kyoto Protocol, adopted in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997, commits 37 industrialized countries and the European Union to the so-called Kyoto target of reducing their greenhouse gas emissions by an average of 5% against 1990 levels, over the 2008-2012 period.

Detailed explanation-3: -84 countries signed the Protocol during that period. In order to enter into force, the Protocol must be ratified (or adopted, approved, or acceded to) by 55 Parties to the Convention, including Annex I Parties accounting for 55% of carbon dioxide emissions from this group in 1990.

Detailed explanation-4: -Emissions trading, as set out in Article 17 of the Kyoto Protocol, allows countries that have emission units to spare-emissions permitted them but not “used”-to sell this excess capacity to countries that are over their targets. Thus, a new commodity was created in the form of emission reductions or removals.

Detailed explanation-5: -The Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty to set legally binding targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions, was adoped 25 years ago, on 11 December 1997, in Kyoto, Japan.