•How many ratified it?

Of the 182 ratifying nations, 36 are considered developed. Notably absent from the list of ratifying nations is the US, which continues to hold out on account of the lack of restrictions on developing nations, though this seems to be a logical fallacy, given the objectives of the Kyoto Protocol. 137 developing countries ratified the protocol, including Brazil, China and India, but have no obligation beyond monitoring emissions. The developed nations agreed to collectively cut average emissions from 2008-2012 by 5.2 per cent below the 1990 levels, and some of them also opted to provide technological and financial support to developing nations. The sources of Kyoto credits are the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects.

•Where does the Protocol stand now?

The countries have failed to reach emission cut targets, and since then there have been other agreements like the non-binding ‘Washington Declaration’ of February 2007, where countries agreed on the outline of a successor to the Kyoto Protocol. It envisaged a global cap-and-trade system by 2009. The June 2007 33rd G8 Summit agreed that the G8 nations would “aim to at least to halve global CO2 emissions”, in a process that would also include the major emerging economies. In December 2007, at a UN climate change conference in Bali, an agreement was reached to work out a final blueprint to fight global warming by 2009. The last signatory to the agreement was the US. However, experts warned that America had again got what it wanted. “They did not want hard targets. They didn’t get them.”

... contd.