the laborious ratification of the Kyoto Protocol

In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol, the first international treaty to impose mandatory reductions in their greenhouse gas emissions on industrialized countries, was adopted. But it will only be ratified after an exhausting process which will last 8 years, during which it will lose a lot of its credibility.

From the first COP in Berlin in 1995, the different governments agreed to draft a protocol which imposes mandatory emission reductions on industrialized countries. And for this, they give themselves two years. Everything was going pretty fast at the time. “The Kyoto Protocol was ultimately negotiated quite quickly, in three years,” remembers Amy Dahan, historian of science, emeritus research director at the CNRS. And we must remember that at that time, the negotiation was only between historically developed countries: Europe, United States, Canada, Australia. And it was understood that the countries of the former Soviet Union were included. But obviously, they were in profound deindustrialization. It was about setting a certain number of targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions for the year 2020 compared to 1990. And frankly, it was about doing as little as possible. for everyone, that is to say everyone try to have as little as possible.”

As early as COP2, in Geneva in 1996, governments agreed on a very controversial element: flexible mechanisms, which would be the great innovation of the Kyoto Protocol. At the time, these mechanisms were not at all unanimous: it was a question of relying on the market, rather than on strict limits. We will be able to buy emissions quotas if we are above the set limit, and resell them if we are below. The aim was to give more flexibility to companies, and the United States had made these mechanisms the sine qua non condition of their participation in the future Protocol. However, these mechanisms were far from unanimous. “You should know that the reasons why we were not very favorable to what we call coordination by quantities is that there is no mom and dad who can cut the cake by saying that ‘there is the right distributionexplains economist Jean-Charles Hourcade, who directly participated in the writing of four IPCC reports and, as such, followed the Kyoto Protocol negotiations very closely.

“A group of industries that agree, that we can negotiate with them a reduction in emissions on a certain date, that works. But for a country, you enter into questions of justice which are absolutely not possible to resolve . And so we say it won’t work.”

Jean-Charles Hourcade, economist

But at COP2 in Geneva, the principle was put into effect. When the delegates arrived in Kyoto in 1997, the main principles of the Protocol had already been decided, and we readily imagine that the final negotiation could have been only a formality. Far from there. Quite the opposite will happen. The American administration wanted a system of this type, but it did not have the support of Congress at that time, says Paul Watkinson, former head of the French delegation in the climate negotiations. “We must remember that before the Kyoto negotiation in 2007, a few months earlier, the Senate still voted a resolution 98 against zero to refuse any protocol which did not also imply a commitment for the major emerging countries, including China, he explains. This is the Byrd-Hagel resolution, which prohibits American ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. And on July 25, 1997, the resolution was passed unanimously by the Senate. “So even though Al Gore signed this agreement, it was already known that the Americans could not present this to the Senate for ratification.”

Despite everything, the Kyoto Protocol was signed painfully on December 11, 1997. It provided for a double condition to enter into force: to be ratified by at least 55 countries, which together had to represent at least 55% of global gas emissions. greenhouse effect. At the time, the United States and Russia represented around 45% of global emissions: one or the other, and ideally both, must therefore ratify the Protocol for it to enter into force. But in March 2001, George Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the Kyoto Protocol.

At this point, many believe this is the final nail in the Protocol’s coffin. But the United Nations will try everything, and play its last card: we will organize a catch-up COP, COP 6bis, to try to put the pieces back together, in Bonn, six months later. And despite the American withdrawal, or perhaps thanks to the American withdrawal, the conference was a success: we managed to agree on several essential points, in particular the sanctions to be applied for those who defaulted. And at COP7 in Marrakech, in December, we finalize the latest application rules. This time, everything is ready: we even agree on an implementation date: the Protocol will be officially launched at the major United Nations conference on sustainable development, scheduled for Johannesburg in 2002, ten years later the Rio Earth Summit.

We had just forgotten one small detail: ratifications were still missing… Particularly that of Japan, where the government is under significant pressure from the automobile industry not to ratify the text, even though it was in Japan that it was sign ! Japan finally ratified the Protocol in June 2002, almost five years after its signature. Same in Canada: the country will painfully ratify the text in 2002, despite very strong opposition from oil-producing provinces, such as Alberta. But Canada will never succeed in achieving its objectives, and will withdraw from the Protocol on the sly in 2011, to avoid sanctions.

Finally, on February 16, 2005, the Kyoto Protocol came into force, after ratification by Russia. The ratification process will have taken a little over seven years, seven long years during which we will have lost a lot of time, but also seven years during which the Protocol – and therefore international cooperation in the fight against climate change – would lose. a lot of credibility. Because it was far from having resolved the whole question: it predicted a drop in emissions of 5.2% compared to the 1990 level, but only for industrialized countries. And 1990, for the countries of the South, that doesn’t mean much. The Kyoto Protocol was in fact a fairly experimental, time-limited Protocol that only imposed emissions reductions on industrialized countries. And who will suffer, almost from birth, from a lack of credibility.

“Climate failures”, a franceinfo podcast by François Gemenne in collaboration with Pauline Pennanec’h, produced by François Richer, broadcast by Thomas Coudreuse. A podcast to be found on the franceinfo website, the Radio France application and several other platforms such as Apple podcasts, Podcast Addict, Spotify, or Deezer.