As hopes for any deal on global warming dims at the Cancun meet later this year, United Nations climate chief Christiana Figueres on Wednesday made it clear that the Kyoto Protocol will continue post 2012 as a second protocol since it does not have a 'sunset' clause.
Canada, a major energy producer, has become the first country to quit the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, saying the 1997 accord was an 'impediment' on cutting global carbon emissions with top emitters like the United States and China not covered by it.
The Kyoto Protocol is the "make or break" issue for UN climate talks in Cancun, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh said, as he pointed not only Japan but many other countries are opposed to continuation of the treaty that legally binds industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Chairperson of Ad Hoc Working group on Kyoto Protocol, John Ashe, said parallel negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol are being carried on at the conference and will be wrapped on December 15 after which a report will be presented.
The Conference of Parties must come up with a successor to the Kyoto Protocol which expires in 2012.
Even as developing nations gear up for a big boom in carbon market, several projects registered with the UN carbon market regulator have drawn flak from various quarters.
Five top United Nations officials have urged world leaders to "seal the deal" at Copenhagen in December on an ambitious new climate change pact aimed at curbing greenhouse gas emissions.
According to the Kyoto protocol, one carbon credit can be earned by reducing a tonne carbon dioxide. One carbon credit is worth $10 as per the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) guidelines.
United Nations climate negotiators on Sunday struck a compromise deal on a roadmap for an accord that will, for the first time, legally force all major carbon emitters to cut greenhouse gas emissions, ending days of wrangling between India and the European Union over the fate of the Kyoto protocol.
India's JSW Steel has been awarded more than 5.4 million carbon credits, including four million carbon credits in the single largest issuance of emissions permits to a Kyoto Protocol project, by the United Nations.
"It (clear future direction for carbon markets) also indicates a new lease of life for Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), especially in the Indian context where this market mechanism under the Kyoto Protocol has been a catalyst for enhanced action on climate mitigation by Indian industry," industry body Ficci said.
The prime minister's comments come close on heels of the developed countries threatening to cut vital aid to the developing nations if they do not back the deal agreed at the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.
GLOBE, a group of legislators from developed and developing countries, has put forward a proposal which it hopes will break the impasse between the US and the rest of the world at the ongoing UN climate summit in Cancun.
About 190 nations agreed on Sunday the building blocks of a new-style global deal due in 2015 to combat climate change amid warnings that far tougher action will be needed to limit rising world temperatures.
India reaffirmed its commitment to the landmark Paris climate change agreement.
Trump's diatribe against India in his speech on the Paris Agreement is hard to explain, especially when a Modi-Trump meeting is supposedly on the cards, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
We lost the gains of Rio and Kyoto in Copenhagen and Paris, but it would have been worse, if any mandatory restraints were imposed on our green house gas emissions, says Ambassador T P Sreenivasan.
COP 21 is about how much carbon space is left and who gets how much of that space
If Paris really meant to serve as a landmark in recognising equity in climate negotiations, it should have heralded the second phase of the Kyoto protocol. Instead we have all countries, India and China included, all signing up with voluntary commitments in what can only be seen as a race to the bottom, reports Darryl D'Monte.
The new agreement, will be negotiated and once it is sealed it will also be judged
The conference has to agree on a draft agreement which would form the cornerstone of a historic deal to be signed in Paris in December 2015 and take effect by 2020.
EU operates as one block at the climate change negotiations and takes a single greenhouse gas emission reduction target under the Paris Agreement
The omission of historical responsibilities, implying the build-up in the atmosphere of 165 years of greenhouse gas emissions from industrialised countries, is a body blow to the notion of climate justice, sums up Darryl D'Monte, reporting exclusively for Rediff.com from COP21.
New text is "ambitious and balanced"
That does not change with the much-expected new US announcement, it only reiterates the imbalance.
PM Modi cautioned against any unilateral steps that will lead to an economic barrier in the battle against climate change as he hoped that the developed countries would mobilise aid.
PM Modi seems to be gradually ending India's strategic ambiguity
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