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Transport, a key challenge to meet Kyoto goals |
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While overall greenhouse gas emissions of industrialized countries decreased by 3.3% between 1990 and 2004, the transport sector showed a 23.9% increase in the same period, according to the latest report by the UN.
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2006-11-15
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Transport remains a sector where emission reductions are urgently required. This is the main finding from the Greenhouse Gas Data 2006 report, issued by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on 30 October.
From 1990 to 2004, the transport sector showed an increase of 23.9% or 680 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent. This is the greatest negative change within all sectors observed.
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While industrialized countries reduced their total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions between 1990 and 2000, the latest period 2000-2004 again shows an increase of 2.4%. This reflects a worrying negative trend and the urgency for industrialized countries to speed up their efforts to reduce GHG emissions.
For the first time, all 41 industrialized Parties of the Convention submitted their national GHG inventories. The US remains the world’s greatest GHG polluter with a 15.8% increase from 1990-2004, while best performer Germany is “relatively close” to Kyoto Protocol targets by reducing emission by 17.2% during the same period.
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Reactions
"The report shows that by the middle of the century, emissions probably need to be reduced by 60% or 80%, at least by industrialised countries," said Ivo de Boer, the head of the UN climate change secretariat. "It's telling us that we need to act on climate change very urgently or else it's going to get very expensive," he added.
“The jump in emissions is remarkable. It seems there has been a tremendous shift in the past five years,” said Nobel Prize winning professor of chemistry Paul Crutzen. He referred to a study by Unesco proving that carbon dioxide emissions increased four times as fast between 2000 and 2005 than from 1990 to 2000.
Background
The Kyoto Protocol presently requires 35 industrialized countries and the European Community to reduce GHG emission by 5% below 1990 levels in its first commitment period between 2008 and 2012. At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Nairobi, negotiations on the second commitment period after 2012 will continue until 17 November.
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More information:
 Summary of the Greenhouse Data, 2006 report (377 KB)
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