UK climate change commitments (The UK programme)

Over a decade ago, the UK along with most other countries joined an international treaty – the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to begin to consider what can be done to reduce global warming and to cope with whatever temperature increases are inevitable. The Convention places the heaviest burden for fighting climate change on industrialised nations, since they are the source of most past and current greenhouse gas emissions. For the most part, these developed nations, called ‘Annex 1’ countries because they are listed in the first annex to the treaty, belong to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

As an Annex 1 Party to the Convention, the UK was required develop a national programme to slow climate change and reduce its emissions of greenhouse gases to 1990 levels by the year 2000. The UK Programme is based around the precautionary approach adopted by the Convention and it was one of relatively few countries that achieved its commitment, with emissions in 2000 about 13.6% below the 1990 level.

Recently, a number of nations approved an addition to the treaty: the Kyoto Protocol, which has more powerful (and legally binding) measures. The UK’s obligation under the Kyoto Protocol is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% by the period 2008–2012 compared with 1990 levels. The Government’s priority is to deliver the UK’s legally binding target under the Kyoto Protocol but it believes that greater reductions in emissions are feasible, and that there will be real advantages to the UK in aiming to achieve them. That is why the Government and the devolved administrations agreed a separate domestic goal of reducing carbon dioxide emissions to 20% below 1990 levels by 2010. This is to ensure that the UK continues to lead by example on climate change and starts to make the transition to a lower carbon economy. Climate Change: the UK Programme aims to put the UK on a path to the latter, with real progress by 2020. The UK is one of the very few countries on track to meet its commitment, and greenhouse gas emissions projected to be almost 20% below 1990 levels by 2010.