Kyoto kicks into gear

2005-02-16 08:31

Kyoto - The Kyoto Protocol, the world's most far-reaching environmental treaty, took effect on Wednesday at 05:00 with 34 industrialised countries legally bound to slash pollution causing global warming.

The treaty took effect at midnight at United Nations headquarters in New York, which is 14:00 in Kyoto, the ancient Japanese city where the landmark agreement now supported by 141 countries was reached in 1997.

"It enters into force today," Seth Osafu, senior legal adviser at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Kyoto's parent treaty, said.

The treaty requires industrial countries as a whole to cut carbon-dioxide gas emissions by 5.2% before 2012 compared with their 1990 levels, with targets set individually for each nation.

The developing world has no obligations under the treaty, which was rejected by the United States in one of President George W Bush's first acts after taking office in 2001.

Australia is the only other major industrial country which has rejected Kyoto. Australia and the United States together account for 30% of global greenhouse-gas pollution.

After the US withdrawal, Kyoto could not come into effect until the ratification last year by Russia which ensured that an adequate percentage of industrialised nations' pollution producers were on board.

- AFP