The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) talks opened on Monday in Bali, Indonesia, with a plan to review the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, high on the agenda.

Rwandan State Minister for Lands and Environment, Patricia Hajabakiga, is expected next week with other delegates from 190 nations to debate the success of the Kyoto Protocol beyond 2012.
The Kyoto Protocol was agreed by several governments at a 1997 UN summit in Kyoto, Japan, to reduce greenhouse gases emitted by developed countries to at least 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.

"Countries are meeting in Bali to review the progress of Kyoto Protocol and decide the way forward for sustaining its global mandate,” Hajabakiga said yesterday as she confirmed that she will leave for the summit on December 9.

The UN summit, which got underway yesterday ends on December 14, and is expected to make a breakthrough on a new global pact to fight climate change beyond the expiration of Kyoto Protocol in 2012.

It is also anticipated to add force to the UNFCCC efforts on global warming since it is under pressure to deliver a global agreement on how to cut rising greenhouse gas emissions.

This is after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a panel of leading scientists, concluded recently that climate change was very likely caused by human activity.

Scientists say time is running out. To avoid the worst effects, the United Nations says global emissions need to peak by 2015 and be cut by 50 to 85 percent from 2000 levels by 2050.
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