Copenhagen: African countries threaten walk out on confab

African countries in a dramatic move this morning threatened to walk out of the ongoing United nations framework conference on climate change, UNFCCC, holding in Copenhagen, Denmark, following fears that developed countries are planning to sabotage the process by abandoning the Kyoto protocol which binds the developed countries to certain levels of gas emissions.

The African countries led by Nigeria and Algeria said at a press conference yesterday morning that they were disappointed with the move by the developed countries. The African countries feared that the developed countries are trying to collapse the Kyoto protocol and pursue other non binding agreement.

The Kyoto protocol was adopted on December 11, 1997 in Kyoto Japan and it entered into force on February 16, 2005. As at November 2009 187 states have ratified the protocol.

The two most notable non-members of the protocol is the United States which is a signatory of the UNFCCC and was responsible for 36.1% of the 1990 emission levels.

Under the Protocol, 37 industrialized countries (called “Annex I countries”) commit themselves to a reduction of four greenhouse gases (GHG) (carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexa-fluoride) and two groups of gases (hydro-fluorocarbons and per fluorocarbons) produced by them, and all member countries give general commitments.

Annex I countries agreed to reduce their collective greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from the 1990 level. Emission limits do not include emissions by international aviation and shipping, but are in addition to the industrial gases, chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs, which are dealt with under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer.

The benchmark 1990 emission levels were accepted by the Conference of the Parties of UNFCCC (decision 2/CP.3) [2] were the values of “global warming potential” calculated for the IPCC Second Assessment Report.

These figures are used for converting the various greenhouse gas emissions into comparable CO2 equivalents when computing overall sources and sinks.

Each Annex I country is required to submit an annual report of inventories of all anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions from sources and removals from sinks under UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol.