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In December 1997, in Kyoto, Japan, developed states for the first time adopted an agreement accepting, in principle, that they should be bound to meet specific targets and timetables on greenhouse gas emissions as a means of addressing climate change. If the standards specified in the Kyoto Protocol1 to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)2 are met, it was projected that by 2012 there would be an overall reduction in emissions levels to 5.2 percent below 1990 levels.
As of July 17, 2001, eighty-four states had signed the protocol and thirty-six had ratified or acceded to it.3 The protocol will enter into force only after fifty-five states ratify or adhere to it, on the condition that those states account for at least 55 percent of the total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions of developed states. The United States-the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases (responsible for 25 percent of annual global emissions)-signed the protocol on November 12, 1998, but neither it nor any other developed state has yet to ratify it.
The delay in ratification has mainly been due to the protocol's failure to resolve a substantial number of issues about how it would operate. In particular, the United States and other developed states sought to resolve complicated issues regarding (1) the use of marketbased approaches that would enable parties to engage in "emissions trading" and to employ other flexibility mechanisms in order to meet their reduction commitments, (2) the means for counting carbon "sinks," such as farmland, rangeland, and forests, toward parties' reduction commitments, and (3) the means for determining and addressing a party's noncompliance. The United States and some other states strongly favored the use of flexibility mechanisms and carbon sinks as a means of allowing states to achieve their targets in an efficient and politically acceptable manner. The European Union and many other states, however, opposed such approaches, arguing that the United States was seeking to avoid its reduction commitments.4
At the Fifth Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC in November 2000 in The Hague, states tried to bridge these differences but failed to do so.5 According to the chief U.S. negotiator, the United States put forward a number of constructive proposals, proposed a robust compliance regime, advanced a creative...