EuropaWorld 12/10/2001 Marrakech Meeting to Make Kyoto Protocol Fully Operational

'A turning point that enables the Kyoto Protocol to move into high gear' was how the forthcoming meeting of delegates to the seventh Conference of the parties to the Convention on Climate Change was described this week. The meeting, to be held in Marrakech, Morocco from 29 October to 9 November, will finalise the procedures and institutions needed to make the Kyoto Protocol fully operational.

Participating governments at Marrakech will aim to translate the political principles reached at the last meeting of the Climate Change Conference in Bonn last July into a detailed operational rulebook. They will also address how to increase the flow of financial and technological support to developing countries under the Convention.

"Certainty about the Kyoto Protocol's rules will further motivate businesses and other economic actors to create the low-carbon economy of the future," he said. "It will also clear the way for governments to ratify the Protocol and bring it into force. Marrakech should be turning point that enables the Protocol to move into high gear." said Michael Zammit Cutajar, the Convention's Executive Secretary.

With the new funding and rules in place, the Parties to the Convention could start discussing the political issues that are likely to dominate the next few years, including the widespread desire to re-engage the United States in emissions limitation, the second period for emissions cuts under the Protocol (on which negotiations should start by 2005) and the prospects for expanding the group of countries with emissions targets, the UNFCCC said.

The Kyoto Protocol will enter into force and become legally binding after it has been ratified by at least 55 parties to the Convention, with industrialised countries representing at least 55 per cent of the total 1990 carbon dioxide emissions from this group. So far, 39 countries have ratified, including one industrialised country, Romania.