PGMA bats for compliance by industrialized nations on level of greenhouse gas emissions

HONG KONG, Dec. 3 (PNA) -- President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo batted strongly yesterday for compliance by industrialized countries of the Kyoto Protocol binding various countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases and the retention of the carbon credit mechanism of the agreement.

The President made the call during the opening plenary session of the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) at the Grand Hyatt Hong Kong. This is the first time that the CGI forum is being held outside the United States.

The President -- who is attending the forum upon the special invitation of former US President Bill Clinton, her college classmate at Georgetown University -- said the Philippines’ ''needs are very small compared to China and the US but we find the carbon credit mechanism very useful and I hope that it can be extended beyond the period of the Kyoto Protocol.''

A legally binding agreement, the Kyoto Protocol calls on industrialized economies to reduce their collective emissions of greenhouse gases – carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, sulfur hexafluoride HFCs and PFCs – by 5.2 percent compared to 1990 levels.

This represents a 29-percent reduction in the greenhouse gases compared to the emission levels that could be expected by 2010 without the Kyoto agreement.

The first term of commitment of the Kyoto Protocol ends in 2012. UN member countries are looking at other means of financing the greenhouse gas emissions program.

The President said that Toyota Motors Corp. in the Philippines has been using carbon credits to reforest northern Philippines' mountain ranges.

She added that carbon credits are also being used in the Philippines to transform methane gas from garbage dumps to electric power.

''I think the carbon credits are very useful... It is very useful for the Philippines,” she stressed, adding that she had attended several fora that made “fun'' of carbon credits.

Carbon credits are a key component of national and international emissions trading schemes that have been implemented to mitigate global warming.

They provide a way to reduce greenhouse effect emissions on an industrial scale by capping total annual emissions and letting the market assign a monetary value to any shortfall through trading.

The concept of carbon credits came into existence as a result of the increasing awareness of the need for controlling emissions.

The mechanism was formalized in the Kyoto Protocol, an international environmental treaty intended to achieve stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere.