KATHMANDU, July 24: The government has registered the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol in parliament for ratification with just five months left for the expiration of its relevance.
The eighth session of the conference of party nations to the Kyoto Protocol held in Doha, Qatar had endorsed the amendment to Kyoto Protocol in 2012, setting a new target for further reduction of carbon emission for developed countries by 2020.
Minister for Forest and Environment Shakti Bahadur Basnet registered the amendment to the protocol at the House of Representative's secretariat for ratification on Monday.
The ratification is expected to help Nepal get a continuation of grants under the climate change adaptation program.
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Nepal became a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol in 2005, which is legally binding for developed countries to minimize the carbon emission in a certain ratio and also to provide grants to the least developed countries to encourage them for carbon reduction.
Nepal, which is listed as a least developed country among the signatories, has benefited from grants worth US$ 12.06 million in the last six years for reducing carbon emission as a signatory to the protocol.
The least developed countries are not under compulsion to reduce carbon emission under the protocol.
According to officials at the Ministry of Forest and Environment (MOFE), Nepal may not get priority in the international carbon trade if it does not ratify the protocol.
“It is a moral issue for us to ratify the protocol instead of its immediate benefits,” said Sindhu Dhungana, spokesperson at the Ministry of Forest and Environment.
United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) secretariat had urged Nepal to ratify the amendment to the protocol on January 17, 2018, after the country did not take any initiatives to ratify the amendment.
The third conference of the UNFCCC party nations had endorsed the Kyoto Protocol and decided to implement it in 1997. As many as 193 countries have become a party to the protocol so far while 129 countries have endorsed the Doha Amendment.
After the ratification of the Doha Amendment, the party nations have planned to exert pressure on the developed countries to set a new target for the reduction of carbon emission.
