The global challenge of climate change is established on the international
agenda. Human activity is destabilizing the global climate and livelihoods that
depend on it. The accumulation of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere
must be capped at a safe level. Adaptation to the changes that are already
inevitable must be integrated in sustainable development programs, with special
attention to the vulnerability of poor countries and poor people.
The United Nations has provided a framework for an effective and equitable
global response to this challenge—the 1992 Convention—and the first building
block of that response, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. Yet the emission reduction
targets in the Protocol, modest as they are in environmental terms, have
generated economic resistance in industrialized countries and, notably, the
rejection of the Protocol by the U.S.
The withdrawal of the largest emitter will undoubtedly weaken the initial
impact of the Protocol. But the Protocol is more than a first set of targets. It
also a method for approaching the collective task of limiting emissions, a set
of mechanisms largely and paradoxically "made in the USA." The possibility
of acquiring emission reductions offshore is a main feature of these mechanisms.
The period ahead is one in which these mechanisms will be tested and
improved. Hopefully, the parallel system that may be developed by the United
States will also encourage recourse to "Kyoto-type" mechanisms by American
corporations, thus contributing to the stock of experience and boosting global
market demand for offshore emission reductions.
