Triple Crisis blogger Martin Khor published the following opinion article at Third World Network on the North-South debate over the Kyoto Protocol, which resumed last week at the global climate talks in Bangkok.
The United Nations’ climate talks resumed last week in Bangkok. There was a lot of drama, with developing countries throwing a challenge to the developed countries to proclaim themselves once and for all, whether they intend to continue with the Kyoto Protocol or to kill it.
This North-South battle had already been boiling the whole of last year. Especially at the big climate conference in Cancun in December, when Japan brazenly stated it had no intention to join a second period of the protocol, after its first period expires in 2012.
Japan’s announcement had evoked outrage among the developing countries, especially since the country had hosted the meeting that created the Kyoto Protocol. The KP is the main pillar of the UN Climate Convention; all the developed countries (except the United States) have made legal commitments under it to cut their emissions of Greenhouse Gases.