Lessons Not Learned in Environmental Governance: International Climate Policy Beyond Kyoto

Kyoto is now widely seen as a failure. The communiqué on climate change issues, from the 2005 Group of Eight (G-8) summit at Gleneagles, put Kyoto on life support when stating that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) would serve as the basis for future climate negotiations. The 2007 G-8 summit confirmed the fate of Kyoto, leading to one commentator likening it to the dead parrot in the famous Monty Python sketch. The refusal in some quarters to turn off life support, and sign Kyoto's death certificate, limits the learning that must necessarily take place if more effective international climate policy is to be developed. This article sets out the faults of the Kyoto Protocol, some (but not all) of which are inherent in the FCCC. This "forensic pathology" suggests two causes of death: the more widely-acknowledged "horizontal" failure to secure accession of the largest emitter, the United States, and commitments from the two largest emerging emitters in China and India; and the less-widely acknowledged "vertical" failure to secure action by those who have acceded. © Australian Centre for Climate and Environmental Law 2008.