Kyoto Protocol's compliance committee has taken up its operations and elected the Chairs of its Enforcement and Facilitative Branches.
According to sources here on Saturday, Ambassador Raúl Estrada Oyuela of Argentina has been elected Chair of the Enforcement Branch while Hironori Hamanaka of Japan was elected Chair of the committee's Facilitative Branch.
The Enforcement Branch has been "designed to ensure the environmental integrity of the agreement and to contribute to the credibility of the carbon market created by the Protocol'.
Under the Kyoto Protocol, 35 industrialised countries and the EEC are required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions below levels specified for each of them in the Protocol. Overall, this should amount to reduction of at least five percent below 1990 levels between 2008 and 2012. The 20-member 'compliance committee' was tasked with dealing with cases of non-compliance with these and other obligations of the Protocol.
Whilst the Enforcement Branch of the Committee has the power to determine consequences for parties that encounter problems with meeting their commitments, the Facilitative Branch of the Committee was designed to provide advice and assistance to Parties in order to promote compliance. Parties to the Protocol provide the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) Secretariat in Bonn with annual reports of their greenhouse gas emissions, which then undergo a rigorous review process. The secretariat also monitors the international carbon emission trading market and receives annual accounting reports from parties on carbon allowances they have acquired or transferred to another party or result from project-level emission reductions.
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