Compromise on climate
history was created on July 23, 2001 at Bonn, Germany, when 180 countries finally reached an agreement on rules to implement the Kyoto Protocol, an international treaty to combat global warming, after almost six months of political uncertainty on the issue. "We felt that we needed that the result (the Bonn agreement) not only for climate reasons, but also in order to show that multilateral negotiations within the framework of United Nations do make sense. It is possible to reach a result,' remarked Jan Pronk, president of the climate change talks held in Bonn, in a befitting reply to the us ' unilateral decision to withdraw from the protocol in March 2001.
The agreement, reached after more than 48-hours of non-stop negotiations, paves the way for the ratification of the protocol, binding industrialised countries to reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases by a specified percentage.However, the agreement left much to be desired. Two days into the high-level ministerial discussions, Pronk presented a proposal for an overall compromise. "We have a legally binding international agreement that leads to real reductions. This is our argument for supporting this proposal, besides all the hard-swallowed compromises,' said Jurgen Trittin, German environment minister, while accepting the proposal in the larger interest of making the protocol work.
All countries, except Japan, Canada, Australia and Russia, agreed on the proposal after Pronk adopted a tough line for not accepting any changes to his proposal. He only offered countries and groups a choice of accepting or rejecting the proposal. These four countries agreed on all but one issue
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