Il Global Warming e l’attuazione del Protocollo di Kyoto in Italia
Author(s)
Mechelli, Barbara
Date Issued
January 28, 2009
Type
Doctoral Thesis
Abstract
The Kyoto Protocol represents the most significant act of the process began in 1979 on the occasion of the First World Climate Conference, which brought the acknowledgment of the human accountability the ongoing climate change. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in 1997 and commits the signatory Members to reducing, in the first commitment period 2008-2012, the overall emissions of greenhouse gases by at least 5% below 1990 levels, which is the historical base year. In 1997 started, therefore, a long and convoluted process with the purpose of defining the international rules, which will be legally binding to put in force and verify the policies and measures to reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases. With Russia’s ratification in October 2004 the quorum was formed and eventually the Treaty which entered into force on 16th February 2005.
The Kyoto Protocol entails not only the reduction and the limitation of greenhouse gas emissions, but also some measures regarding agriculture and forestry, which are important for their role in the carbon capture and storage. The emissions and absorptions coming from these activities could be therefore included, according specific rules of calculation, in greenhouse gases amounts assigned to each Member, to the final intent of balancing, in the case of positive amounts, part of the emissions produced by using fossil fuels and by other human activities with damaging effects on the environment, such as deforestation, intensive use of soils and the indiscriminate use of natural resources.
Italy, which ratified the Kyoto Protocol with Law 1st June 2002, n. 120, committed itself to achieve, for the first commitment period, a reduction by 6.5% below 1990 levels of emissions. Nevertheless, between 1990 and 2006, there was an increase of the overall emissions up to 10% and this will imply a more demanding target to face in the future.
Being of the opinion that the new climate reality is the best demonstration that the human progress is incompatible with the production of economic wealth, this research will show the international, European and national positions and initiatives regarding the Global Warming problem. Above all, on 23rd January 2008 the European Commission launched a package of initiatives in order to face up to the climate change caused by human activities called Climate Action-Energy for a Change World, which has three main targets indicated with the short form 20-20-20 and which must be achieved by 2020: increasing renewable energy use to 20%, reducing greenhouse gases to at least 20% and increasing energy efficiency to 20%. The European policy about climate and energy is, doubtless, the most striving programme regarding the environmental issue set by governments by now.
This research attempts to identify the impact of climate change on the environment and on the natural ecosystems, in order to find the fitting policies. It is a well known fact, that the climate question is strictly related to the world economic and energy production, which is based on unsustainable mass and production models. The acknowledgment that such development models, so closely intertwined with the improper use of natural resources, have unbearable costs for the ecosystem and the living species, has been in the last decades an important tendency and innovation factor. The concept of sustainability is here seen as transversal regarding all governmental activities, which must promote economic policies towards efficient energy options and renewable forms of energy, but also towards an environmental friendly technology and mass models.
This research, as well, analyses the role of forests and agriculture soils on the subject of climate change mitigation, role that was enhanced by the Kyoto Protocol and is now in the emission reduction credits system set by the Protocol itself. Logically, the would-be contribution of forests concerning carbon storage will involve a new agriculture and forest system in order to reach the best result with reference to carbon sequestration in soils and forests. According to the Protocol, there are two different kinds of approach, which can be used to reach the target in the forest management strategy. The first one is to prevent or reduce the carbon release from the existing forest stocks through a sustainable forest management, which should minimize forest cut down and prevent forest fires. The second kind of approach implies active actions such as new forest plantations in place of agriculture or spoiled soils and the repopulation of plants in fire -and disease- damaged forests.
Reducing the study in relation to such themes to Italy, it has been examined the set off of the Kyoto Protocol implementation and which actions are to be assumed to facilitate the Protocol fulfilment and the motions made by the European Community to face the Global Warming. In the last part of this research, with the intention of completing the account of the Kyoto Protocol to be carried out in Italy, there is an analysis of the different local levels about actions made with the object of achieving the commitments towards The Kyoto Protocol and the European Community.
Additional information
Dottorato di ricerca Tutela dell’Ambiente, salvaguardia e valorizzazione del Paesaggio, come patrimonio collettivo e rilevante interesse dell’etica contemporanea
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