The Kyoto Protocol was adopted on 11 December 1997 and entered into force on 16 February 2005. Owing to a complex ratification process, it currently has 192 Parties. The treaty follows the main principles agreed upon in the 1992 convention.
It operationalizes the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change by committing industrialized countries and economies in transition to limit and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in accordance with agreed-upon individual targets. The Convention itself only asks those countries to adopt mitigation policies and measures and report periodically.
Today, the framework has near-universal membership. The 198 countries ratified the Convention are called Parties to the Convention. The ultimate aim of the UNFCCC is to prevent “dangerous” human interference with the climate system.
The Convention recognized that there was a problem. The UNFCCC borrowed an essential line from one of the most successful multilateral environmental treaties in history (the Montreal Protocol, in 1987): it bound member states to act in the interests of human safety despite scientific uncertainty.
Global warming is likely to reach 1.5°C as early as 2030, with current climate action falling short of meeting the Paris Agreement goals and a mounting risk of tipping beyond the ability of human societies to adapt.
Building on broader OECD work on climate, this report proposes a new OECD territorial climate indicator framework. It demonstrates that different territories have different potential to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, adapt to climate impacts, and address vulnerabilities.
Ministerie van Binnenlandse Zaken en Koninkrijksrelaties / Ministry of the Interior and Kingdom Relations | 2009
Minister dr. G. ter Horst: “Beginselen van de democratische rechtsstaat vormen in Nederland het kader van ons functioneren. Burgers en overheid moeten er samen invulling aan geven. De overheid kan dit niet zonder de burgers; de burgers kunnen dit niet zonder de overheid. In die wederkerigheid is een juiste balans nodig van rechten en plichten van de burger enerzijds, en van de overheid anderzijds.
•Principles of the democratic rule of law form the framework of our functioning in the Netherlands. Citizens and the government must flesh them out together. The government cannot do this without the citizens; the citizens cannot do this without the government. This reciprocity requires the right balance of rights and duties of citizens on the one hand and of government on the other.
Provincie Utrecht en Utrecht Universiteit | februari 2024, nl • en
De regio Utrecht als een levend laboratorium voor wereldwijde transities. Een Fellowship bouwt de brug tussen beleid en wetenschap. •The Utrecht region as a living laboratory for global transitions. A Fellowship builds the bridge between policy and science.
Uit gevoerde discussies, geleid door Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development komt naar voren de grote uitdagingen om succesvolle transities op lokale en regionale schaal te realiseren en tegelijkertijd bij te dragen aan bredere wereldwijde transities. De integratie van nieuwe wetenschappelijke inzichten met het formuleren van strategie en beleid wordt gevoeld als essentieel transities binnen gemeente en provincie te kunnen versnellen. •Discussions led by the Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development revealed the major challenges of achieving successful transitions at local and regional scales while contributing to broader global transitions. Integrating new scientific insights with formulating strategy and policy is essential to accelerating transitions within municipalities and provinces.
De Verenigde Naties hebben ‘Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability’ aangewezen als een kernprobleem van de 21e eeuw.
• The United Nations has identified ‘Aligning Governance to the Challenges of Global Sustainability’ as a key problem of the 21st century.
Uitdagingen / challenges
De regio Utrecht kent grote duurzaamheidsuitdagingen, zoals de energietransitie, de circulaire economie, duurzame voedselsystemen en aanpassing aan klimaatverandering. Healthy urban living wordt gebruikt als overkoepelend beleidsconcept. Overheden en andere belanghebbenden gebruiken een transitieaanpak waarin verschillende experimenten worden uitgevoerd in een proeftuinomgeving. Stedelijke experimenten laten een verschuiving zien van het uitvoeren van lokale pilots naar het testen van innovaties op wijkschaal. Op deze schaal neemt de complexiteit aanzienlijk toe. De provincie Utrecht heeft zich onlangs gepresenteerd als proeftuin voor de duurzaamheids- en gezondheidsdoelen voor 2050 zoals gedefinieerd in de Europese Green Deal.
• The Utrecht region has large sustainability challenges, such as the energy transition, the circular economy, sustainable food systems, and adaptation to climate change. Healthy urban living is used as an umbrella policy concept. Governments and other stakeholders use a transition approach in which various experiments are carried out in a living lab setting. Urban experiments show a shift from carrying out local pilots to testing innovations on a neighbourhood scale. On this scale, the complexity increases significantly. The province of Utrecht has recently presented itself as a living lab for the sustainability and health objectives for 2050 as defined in the European Green Deal.
Fellowship
Een samenwerking dus van wetenschap en overheid om te vernieuwen. Vanaf 1 februari 2024 zijn de Provincie Utrecht en de Departement Bestuurs- en Organisatiewetenschap (USBO) van Universiteit Utrecht een drie-jarige overeenkomst aangegaan – via een Fellowship – om de grens tussen wetenschap en beleid te overbruggen. •Therefore a collaboration of science and government to innovate. From 1 February 2024, the Province of Utrecht and the Department of Management and Organisational Science (USBO) of Utrecht University entered into a three-year agreement – through a Fellowship – to bridge the boundary between science and policy.
De aanpak is transdisciplinair: er zijn diverse wetenschappers bij betrokken, naast belanghebbenden zoals bewonersgroepen, maatschappelijke organisaties, kennisinstellingen, organisaties op de campus, gemeenten en provincie. •The approach is transdisciplinary: it involves several scientists, in addition to stakeholders such as resident groups, civil society organisations, knowledge institutions, campus organisations, municipalities and the province.
Based on interviews with directors and managers in the public domain, we have developed the following ‘simple’ formula to determine the likelihood of governance outcomes. The formula is developed from our position and role as city manager in the public domain of the province, region, city, village, district, neighbourhood, or street.
SF x MF x IP = R
At the start, of course, there is always a preliminary Issue to be resolved. After all, otherwise, there is nothing to govern. In the highly politically driven landscape of the public domain, examples of issues can be found in the daily headlines of papers and magazines. We do not elaborate on this, but we faced many issues in our interviews where the formula was ‘launching’ itself.
“Over the past 15-20 years, the international arena has witnessed a significant public debate about which major principles should be employed to govern companies. The general term for these principles is corporate governance, a concept that is difficult to translate into Danish. In our opinion the concept can be defined as:
“The goals, according to which a company is managed, and the major principles and frameworks which regulate the interaction between the company’s managerial bodies, the owners as well as other parties, who are directly influenced by the company’s dispositions and business (in this context jointly referred to as the company’s stakeholders). Stakeholders include employees, creditors, suppliers, customers and the local community.””
PRIMO Res Publica 