Policy solutions

Cut emissions!

Governments need to agree drastic measures to slow down climate change

Since climate change is a worldwide problem, it is imperative to have binding international agreements between the key contributors to this problem.

The first agreement between countries across the world to tackle climate change was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). A few years later came the Kyoto Protocol which implements the Convention and sets mandatory emission reduction targets for industrialised countries.

Go for Kyoto

WWF launched the Go For Kyoto campaign to push enough governments to ratify the Kyoto Protocol and make it a legal treaty. Since the Protocol came into force on 16 February 2005, efforts have focused on securing the longer-term perspective of the legal framework of the Kyoto Protocol, and ensuring that emission reductions are actually implemented at national level.

Today WWF works with governments, businesses, academics, and NGOs from many sectors to ensure that climate policy continues to move in the right direction.




Key challenges for Kyoto

The Kyoto Protocol is the most important – and only – international legal instrument that sets binding targets for emission reductions for industrialized countries. Whilst recognising recent progress at the Montreal Conference in December 2005, WWF believes it is imperative that this process continues.

Some of the key challenges for the future development of the Kyoto Protocol are now:

• A binding and clear long-term agreement on deep emission cuts, eventually leading to 50% global emission reduction and 60% to 80% emission reductions in (today’s) industrialized countries by 2050.
• Binding reduction targets for the key industrial countries.
• The large developing countries – especially China, India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, but also Korea, Indonesia, Turkey and others – should develop their own strategies to reduce emissions in the longer term, taking into account ‘shared but differentiated responsibility’.

G8 and other initiatives

Secondary to the Kyoto and UNFCCC process, but also important, there are other initiatives which need to be taken into account: 

• The G8 climate change dialogue which was initiated by UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in July 2005. The decisions by G8 (plus the 5 biggest industrializing countries) are non-binding but have set the scene for action by the world’s richest countries.
• The scientific work by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which conducts what is probably the world’s biggest peer review process, and publishes its assessment reports approximately every 6 years. The next report is due in 2007, with about 2,000 scientists contributing.
• The Asia Pacific Pact on climate change – a United States initiative by the Bush administration which has so far not shown any concrete result.

Why does policy matter?

Many people, especially business people, argue that one could leave it all to voluntary action and market-driven change.

But humanity is in a totally new situation without historical precedent. The world population must jointly change the system for energy provision totally, and this more or less in 50 years. This requires legislation and speed. Reliance on voluntary and market-driven changes could be too little too late. It is a risk we cannot afford to take.

A global legal framework was therefore rightly developed.