The UN is currently hosting it’s 2008 Climate Change Conference in Poznan, Poland. This conference serves as an opportunity for many different international bodies related to climate change, and is being attended by representatives from over 180 countries, and independent observers.

The primary purpose of this meeting is to make progress on what will be the successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997, and was the international agreement under which 37 industrialized nations committed to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions to and average value between 2008 and 2012 of 5.2% below 1990 levels. It allowed for many different flexible mechanisms for industrialized countries to achieve these targets such as emissions trading as we see in the EU, or the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) or Joint Implementation (JI) which allowed them to make greenhouse gas reduction investment in developing countries.

Canada committed to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to 6% below 1990, although we have failed to live up to that target with our countries emissions instead spiralling to 22% above 1990 levels in 2006.

There were many criticisms of the original Kyoto Protocol, many of which were fully justified. These included:

• Lack of greenhouse gas reduction commitments for developing countries (such as India and China)
• Failure to include emissions from airplanes, ships and deforestation among others
• The ease with which free-riders obtained CDM or JI credits (projects which received funding for reducing greenhouse gas emissions that would have gone ahead without the funding)

However, the criticism of these issues often overshadows the importance of the Kyoto Protocol. It represented the first major international collaborative attempt to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions. The task of solving climate change is a gargantuan one, and one that we will not be able to solve instantaneously. It is going to be a step-by-step process. Kyoto was the first step. Hopefully, this conference in Poland is going to be another step.

In 2012, the Kyoto Protocol comes to an end, and we need another international agreement in place to succeed it. Ideally, we can address many of the problems that Kyoto had, but probably not all of them. In order to have something in place for 2013, the international community will need to have finalized discussions by the end of next year so that individual governments can start planning.

Let’s keep the pressure on our governments to keep working hard towards a solution.