At the UN climate conference COP18* in Qatar, the 193 countries present agreed to a proposal to extend the Kyoto treaty until 2020. It is seen as a poor success. The agreements in the protocol are intended to combat global warming by reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
An important point of contention at the summit in the capital, Doha, was the question of whether countries may transfer their unused emission rights for CO2 emissions to a new Kyoto agreement after 2020. Due to the economic crisis, some rights remain unused.
Not all industrialized countries participated in Kyoto II, just as many countries did not participate in the first protocol. In addition to the 27 countries of the European Union, there are another ten countries that endorse the extension of the protocol.
Large states with a lot of pollution, such as the United States, Russia, Japan and Canada, are not covered by the protocol. The countries that do comply account for about 15 % of global emissions. 2020 ends.
René Stevens attended COP18 as a member of an NGO delegation.
* The 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference was the 18th yearly session of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).