A RECENT decision was made by the Government of Guyana to accept the Doha Amendment to the  which was adopted by States Parties to the Protocol on December 8, 2012. 

Considered a valuable part of the momentum for global climate action leading up to 2020 for reduced emission of greenhouse gases, the Doha Amendment includes new commitments for Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. These include those who agreed to take on commitments in a second commitment period from January 1, 2013 to December 31, 2020, and a revised list of greenhouse gases (GHG) to be reported on by Parties in the second commitment period.
The decision of Guyana to accept the Doha Amendment, will not legally bind the country to take any action relating to reduced emissions since the Amendment commits Annex 1 states, of which Guyana is not a member, to further reduce their carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 18 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020.
However, the country’s acceptance will exemplify the commitment of the Government to fighting climate change by adding to the number of acceptances needed to bring the Amendment into force.
To date, nineteen states have accepted the Doha Amendment, but Instruments of Acceptance must be received by the United Nations (UN) Secretary General from at least three-fourths of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, that is, 144 acceptances must be received before the Doha Amendment can come into force.

FURTHER ACCESS TO FUNDS
Accepting the protocol will also pave the way for further access by Guyana to funds under the Clean Development Mechanism and the Adaptation Fund under the Kyoto Protocol.
Under the Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) benefited from funds provided for the Skeldon Bagasse Cogeneration Project. It was to this extent that Guyana had participated in the first period of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol which ran from 2008 to 2012.
The Government’s decision comes on the eve of the 20th Meeting of the Conference of States Parties to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (COP 20) which begins in Lima, Peru on December 1, 2014 where the status of the Doha Amendment will be announced.
The international political response to climate change began with the adoption of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in 1992, which laid out a framework for action aimed at stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases (GHGs) to avoid “dangerous anthropogenic interference” with the climate system. The Convention, which entered into force on 21 March 1994, now has 195 parties.
In December 1997, delegates to the Conference of Parties III (COP 3) in Kyoto, Japan, agreed to a Protocol to the UNFCCC that commits industrialized countries and countries in transition to a market economy to achieve emission reduction targets. These countries, known as Annex I parties under the UNFCCC, agreed to reduce their overall emissions of six greenhouse gases by an average of 5% below 1990 levels between 2008-2012 (first commitment period), with specific targets varying from country to country. The Kyoto Protocol entered into force on 16 February 2005 and now has 192 parties.
A second commitment period was proposed in 2012, known as the Doha Amendment, which would commit only Europe to further CO2 reductions until 2020 but has yet to be ratified. Negotiations are currently underway to agree on a post-Kyoto legal framework that would obligate all major polluters to pay for CO2 emissions. China, India, and the United States have all signaled that they will not ratify any treaty that will commit them legally to reduce CO2 emissions.
The new framework will be negotiated at the December 2015 meeting of the Conference of Parties to the UNFCCC in Paris, France.