SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT AND GOVERNMENT POLICIES

Awareness raised in the international community

At the end of the major international conferences organised by the United Nations to foster more socially responsible and environmentally-friendly economic development, participating countries signed various protocols and charters.
They laid down an ambitious target of gradually reducing greenhouse gas emissions, by harnessing a wider range of energy sources and fostering the development of renewable energies.
Rio Earth Summit — Agenda 2 1— Kyoto Protocol — Johannesburg Earth Summit

  Undertakings secured from 40 industrialised countries in connection with the Kyoto protocol
 


The Kyoto protocol is an international agreement under which 180 nations, including forty or so developed countries, have undertaken to stabilise their greenhouse gas emissions at their current level and then reduce them collectively by 5% at least worldwide over the 2008-2012 period compared to their 1990 levels.
The Kyoto Protocol came into force on 16 February 2005.
The aim of the protocol is for each signatory country to attain the objectives stated in 1997.
In particular, the protocol proposes an international carbon trading market, allowing the buying and selling of emission quotas, otherwise known as “carbon credits”.
  Major role for Europe
 

EU member states, which signed the 1992 United Nations agreement on climate change, ratified the Kyoto protocol in 1997.
The European Union has pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 8% by 2012, particularly by developing renewable energies. The European directive adopted in October 2001 aims to lift the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources from 14% in 1997 to 22% by 2010.
In 2004, Russia in turn ratified the Kyoto protocol.
In February 2005, the Kyoto protocol came into force.

In 2007, the European Union has proposed new objectives for 2020:
- cut greenhouse gas emissions by 20% compared with their 1990 level.
- increase to 20% the percentage of energy consumption covered by renewable energies.
- raise energy efficiency by 20%.

    France has set a target for 23% for end energy consumption to be generated from renewable sources by 2020.