While the failure to ratify the change may not have had an impact on promoting climate action, it would have undermined confidence in the climate negotiation process, analysts say. Mark Lutes, senior advisor on global climate policy at WWF, wrote in a blog post that the Doha amendment is “more than just tying loose ends and avoiding more than just an embarrassing gap in the global climate regime because not enough countries might bother to pass their ratifications.” An amazing step! With 144 parties signed, the Doha Amendment enters into force. This is great news for our @UNFCCC process towards #ClimateAction. Thank you Nigeria 🇳🇬 @MBuhari for your ratification! In recent weeks, Patricia Espinosa, the UN`s climate chief, has encouraged countries to accelerate ratification of the change. “It`s about delivering on commitments,” she said. “This is certainly not a good thing,” said Gilles Dufrasne, head of policy at Carbon Market Watch, an NGO. But “the political benefits of ratifying the amendment outweigh the market-related problems.” And yet, most of the countries that have not ratified the amendment are developing countries that have not had to meet such commitments. But for the international community, especially the UN climate body, it seems bad that the big climate deal would die before Paris. The Doha Amendment created the second phase of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, in which 37 industrialized countries committed to reducing their emissions between 2013 and 2020. Although it has some impact on carbon accounting, the entry into force of the Doha Amendment is mainly symbolic.
It envisions closing the climate regime established in Kyoto, while the world focuses on implementing the Paris Agreement, which requires every country to contribute to climate goals. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol set binding climate targets for industrialised countries. The amendment, signed in Qatar in 2012, extended its commitments and created a second commitment period for 37 countries to reduce their emissions from 2013 to 2020. The Doha targets were far from sufficient to reverse the upward trend in emissions. Australia has proposed using credits from exceeding its Kyoto target to meet its 2030 climate target under the Paris Agreement, which would allow it to significantly slow down the transition to clean energy. The bulk of these funds would come from the second commitment period. The subsequent adoption of the Paris Agreement did not replace the Doha Amendment. The Paris Agreement imposes a code of conduct to pursue the objectives of Nationally Determined Contributions, the first of which are emission reduction targets for 2025 or 2030.
Time is running out for climate protection. Implementation of the Doha Amendment would ensure faster emission reductions in developed countries. With just hours to go, Nigeria is the 144th country to ratify the Doha Amendment to ensure it enters into force before it expires this year. This provisional undertaking would no longer apply on 3 October 2020 if the required number of adoption acts has not been received by the depositary by then. If the depositary received the required number of acts of acceptance after that date, the amendment, which would enter into force 90 days later – after the end of CP2 – would be a stillborn contract. However, the provisional undertaking would have given the amendment most of the expected legal effect. — Patricia Espinosa C. (@PEspinosaC) 2 October 2020 Today, a few months before the end of CP2, the Doha amendment has not yet entered into force.
The amendment shall enter into force for those Parties that have accepted it on the ninetieth day following receipt of an instrument of acceptance by the Depositary by at least three-quarters of the Parties to the Protocol. With 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, the Doha Amendment would be concluded with 144 Parties. The depositary has so far received only 137 instruments of acceptance (see chart), including the 38 parties that would undergo a QELRC in cp2, with the exception of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. None of the Parties that adopted the Doha Amendment made use of the possibility offered by the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol to implement the amendment provisionally. Even the EU – which has long prided itself on its leadership on climate change – has struggled to ratify the agreement. The EU was initially keen to send a strong signal ahead of the 2015 Paris summit, but Poland refused to ratify and did not accept until 2018. “While we would have preferred a very different `end` from the Kyoto Protocol, it played a crucial role in its early period by spurring innovation, raising awareness and catalyzing climate action,” Yamide Dagnet, director of climate negotiations at the World Resources Institute, told Climate Home News. The entry into force of the Doha Amendment comes at a time when global emissions are likely to lead to a 3°C increase in global average temperatures above pre-industrial levels, the UNFCCC warns.
Therefore, the new or updated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that countries will submit in 2020 should continue to be critical to achieving the Paris Agreement`s temperature target – keeping global warming “well below” 2°C and making efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels. Documents signed by the leaders of Jamaica and two other countries must arrive in New York by Midnight Friday to prevent a global climate agreement from becoming an orphan. The last-minute jump to New York is an appropriate end to the Kyoto Protocol, a pact shaped by the many countries that have not joined it. The United States refused to formally ratify the treaty because it imposed few restrictions on developing countries. Canada, Japan, New Zealand and Russia have withdrawn from the agreement. The Doha Amendment does not replace broader climate change mitigation commitments. Parties to the UNFCCC must implement unspecified “climate change mitigation measures”. The principle of due diligence and the principle of due diligence oblige States to prevent transboundary environmental damage, whether or not the damage affects certain areas within or outside the jurisdiction of a State or entire planetary systems such as climate change. Given the impact of climate change on the enjoyment of human rights, the obligation to protect human rights has also been interpreted as an obligation to cooperate in climate protection.
There was little enthusiasm for the Doha amendment, as the rigid division between the commitments of developed and developing countries had been increasingly called into question. The United States had never ratified the Kyoto Protocol, while Canada withdrew at the end of CP1. Japan, New Zealand and Russia have indicated that they do not intend to report to the QELRC during CP2. The Doha Amendment would impose the QELRC on 38 parties – including the EU and its member states – which together account for less than 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions. However, this approach does not take into account the specific “telos” of each climate agreement. The raison d`être of the Kyoto Protocol is to impose QELRCs on Annex I Parties, in particular in CP1. The Doha amendment is to impose additional QELRC on certain parties during CP2. The Doha amendment would lose all meaning if it became impossible for parties to reach their QELRC. In order not to deny the purpose and purpose of the amendment, the parties who have accepted it and who have a QELRC must continue to be able to carry out that QELRC. The purpose of the Doha Amendment could be interpreted in two ways. One view would be that the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the Doha Amendment all pursue the “ultimate goal” defined by the UNFCCC: to avoid a “dangerous” climate change scenario.
Under this approach, the provisional commitment made by the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol that have accepted the Doha Amendment until its entry into force would at most amount to a vague commitment not to make a “dangerous” climate change scenario inevitable. The entry into force of the Doha Amendment, a UNFCCC press release, is “crucial for the rigorous and successful implementation of the second commitment period”. Its entry into force also means that “the accounting for the second phase of the Kyoto Protocol can proceed as planned and that the Compliance Committee of the Kyoto Protocol can fully carry out its legal tasks”. The last-minute jump to New York is an appropriate end to the Kyoto Protocol, a pact shaped by the many countries that have not acceded to it. .
