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C O V E RFuture of Kyoto Protocol stillshrouded in uncertaintyOfficial claims that the Durban conference registered a success in securing asecond round of emission cuts under the Kyoto Protocol are exaggerated, saysChee Yoke Ling. The countries concerned have merely indicated their intention toundertake emission cuts which have yet to be quantified for a second commitmentperiod yet to be determined.Civil society delegates at a session of the Kyoto Protocol ad hoc working group(AWGKP) in Durban. More than five years of negotiations in the AWGKP had failed toyield an agreement on developed countries’ emission reduction targets in the secondcommitment period of the Protocol.IN Cancun last year the climate talksended with the Kyoto Protocol relegatedto intensive care. As the Durbanclimate conference was extendedofficially by an extra day, and finallyclosed after 6 am on 11 Decemberafter another all-nighter, pressuresmounted and an injection was giventhat allowed an official announcementof ‘success’ in adopting a decision onthe next round of greenhouse gasemissions cuts by developed countries.But what did Durban actuallydeliver?Unfortunately, what emergedwere still pledges by developed countriesthat have indicated their intentionto take on a second commitmentperiod under the Kyoto Protocol (KP)to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.Even these are conditional on the domesticprocesses of some developedcountryParties or a new legally bindingagreement on greenhouse gasemissions reduction that would effectivelyreplace the KP in the future.Those under a legal obligation totake on cuts are developed countriesand countries with economies in transitionlisted in Annex I of the UNFramework Convention on ClimateChange (UNFCCC). Of the Annex Icountries, the United States is notablyabsent from the list of Parties tothe KP.But the US agreed in 2007 at theBali climate conference that it wouldtake ‘comparable efforts’ to KP Partiesin reducing its own huge emissions.The quid pro quo was that developingcountries would take nationallyappropriate mitigation actions(with financial and technology supportfrom developed countries includingthe US) as a trade-off to pull theUS into the global mitigation effort.This set of actions under the UNFCCCwould complement the KP secondcommitment period of emissions cutsso that we move more quickly to slowdown global temperature increase.Meanwhile the KP legal regimewas designed to avoid a gap betweenthe first and second commitment periods.The first commitment periodruns from 2008 up to 31 December2012. Consequently, in December2005 the Ad Hoc Working Group onFurther Commitments for Annex IParties under the Kyoto Protocol(AWGKP) was mandated to ‘to considerfurther commitments for Partiesincluded in Annex I for the periodbeyond 2012 in accordance with Article3, paragraph 9, of the Protocol’.The specific mandate is to agree onthe reduction targets in aggregate andindividually or jointly of Annex I Parties.As thousands of participants arrivedin Durban, more than five yearsof negotiations in the AWGKP failedto yield an agreement, with only verylow pledges made by mainly Europeancountries. Since 2007 Annex IParties had also increased their demandsand conditions on developingcountries such as China and India totake on mitigation commitments in anew legally binding treaty, in the mistakenhope that this would also pullthe US into taking action. As manyobservers and developing-countrydelegates remarked again and again,if the US administration cannot evenPhoto courtesy of IISD/Earth Negotiations BulletinTHIRD WORLD RESURGENCE No 255/25625