Welcome to our site. We’re about letting kids understand how climate change affects us all, after all, they are the next generation and perhaps they can make the change that we currently don’t seem to have the will, to make the change to the way we currently live
The Kyoto Protocol is an agreement between countries to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases their countries produce. The wording of this agreement was written and voted on in Kyoto, Japan on 11th December 1997 and came into force on February 16th 2005 when Russia joined.
agreed to reduce greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2); methane (CH4); and nitrous dioxide (N2O), by a percentage of the levels produced in 1990, before 2012. They also agreed to reduce hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6). Each country has a different target based on their industrialisation and economic health.
Protocol only came in to effect, and a ‘Treaty’, when countries accounting for 55% of greenhouse gas emissions in the world signed up to the Protocol. In practice this means it wouldn’t work without the agreement of one of the two biggest countries: Russia and USA. The USA have refused to sign, but Russia have now signed meaning that the Treaty has come into force and the targets set for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by all the countries signing are now legally binding on them
Each country’s target is not totally rigid, because there are plans to allow countries who are well within their target to sell their ‘carbon credits’ to countries who were struggling to meet their targets. This is ’emission trading’