Wednesday, February 16, 2005
Kyoto's next big meeting is in Montreal
The conference will take place in Montreal, in the city's Palais des Congres convention centre, from November 28 to December 9, in response to an offer from Canada, the UNFCCC, which is Kyoto's parent organisation, said in a press statement.
It will be the first "Meeting of the Parties", or MOP, since Kyoto took effect, and is expected to broach some of the toughest political issues on the climate-change agenda.
The protocol's framework was agreed in 1997, but it took nearly four years of arduous negotiations to complete its complex rulebook, and three years after that for the deal to be ratified and turned into an international treaty.
The accord requires industrialised countries that have signed and ratified it to trim their pollution of carbon-based "greenhouse" gases, emitted mainly by fossil fuels, that are blamed for global warming.
The Montreal talks will launch debate on the outlines of the next pact after the first Kyoto commitment period runs out in 2012.
One of the big questions will be how to entice the United States, which has rejected the present format as too costly for its economy, back into the multilateral fold.
Another issue is whether fast-growing, big-population countries like China and India should join industrialised countries in having fixed targets for emission controls.
Under the present Kyoto format, developing countries are excluded from having to make specific cuts in their emissions because of the burden this would impose on their economies.
Although the United States has refused to ratify Kyoto, it is allowed to attend meetings because it is a member of the UNFCCC.
In a statement issued from its secretariat in Bonn, the UNFCCC added that a seminar of government experts would be held in the former West German capital on May 16 and 17.
That meeting will seek to "develop responses to climate change and to review the policies and measures adopted to implement the (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol," it said.
