The Supplementarity Requirement of the Kyoto Flexible Mechanisms

Summary

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home or abroad has become the dilemma within contemporary climate change policy, touching upon various concepts such as cost-effectiveness, environmental effectiveness, equity, and sustainable development, and challenging the North-South relationship in itself. Although Annex I Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are legally obligated, through the supplementarity requirement, to meet their Kyoto Protocol emission reduction targets to a certain extent through ‘domestic actions’, most Parties prefer to make use of flexibility mechanisms arguing that actions to reduce emissions should be taken where it is cheapest given the fact that the effect on the atmosphere will be the same. This presentation explored the limits to flexibility and elucidated the understanding of the supplementarity requirement in the Articles 6, 12 and 17 of the Kyoto Protocol. Finally, the presentation provided an effective and justifiable interpretation of the supplementarity requirement, which would be acceptable to both industrialized and developing countries taking into account cost-, and environmental effectiveness as well as equity considerations.