Kyoto Protocol, Quo Vadis Developments Through the Buenos Aires's COP-4 What Do They Mean to the Forest Industry?, 1999 Environmental Conference Proceedings

Dr. Sergio F. Galeano

Georgia-Pacific Corp.

After the Kyoto meeting of the parties in December 1997, a series of meetings and conferences have attempted to clarify the gaps in the Protocol’s language and to advance its understanding and opportunities for a realistic implementation. The interconnectedness of these various meetings sometimes is not fully understood by all. At Dakar in May 1998, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, met to discuss inventory approaches for carbon sequestration. Although unfinished, decisions from that meeting carried into the Subsidiary Body for Scientific and Technological Advice, SBSTA, meeting at Bonn in June 1998. There, issues of trading, purchases of credits and their limits, attempts to clarify interpretation of section 3.7 on deforestation and afforestation credits, etc., were discussed and countries were aligned in several issues, principally along groups such as US-Canada, European Union, and the G-77 with China.