Follow-up to the Kyoto Conference excerpt
"An international conference on the Sustainable Future of the Global System was held at the United Nations University in Tokyo last February. Organized jointly by Tokyo-based United Nations University's Institute of Advanced Studies and the Institute for Global Environmental Strategies, the conference was attended by experts from international agencies and leading institutions around the world. The symposium addressed the implications of the Kyoto Protocol negotiated at the Conference on the Environment in 1997, when 30 industrialized countries made a commitment to reduce overall emissions of six greenhouse gases to 5% below 1990 levels by 2008-2012. The 130 or so developing countries, which make up 85% of the world's population, however, were not part of this agreement. The earth's fragile atmosphere, as everyone knows, is drastically changing: carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have increased fourfold in the past 50 years. These and other toxic emissions have caused the average world temperature to rise resulting in dramatic effects on the global climate including rising sea levels, altered seasonal precipitation patterns, land degradation, desertification, biodiversity loss and decreased agricultural production. Especially for Southeast Asia, due to the high level of sulphur oxide emission (a major source of acid rain), the entire region faces significant health problems and poor quality of water and air."
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