WTO And Kyoto

WTO
-Formed on January1 1995 to replace GATT.
-WTO director general is Pascal Lamy, a French.
Failure of Doha Talks because
1) US,China and India did not converge on agriculture trade.US gives export subsidies and India has import tariffs on which there was dispute.
2) Industrial tariffs and non tariff barriers.

Other topic discussed in Doha was Access to patented medicines. Developing and poor countries pay a large money for patent cost of basic medicines to developed countries. After Doha talks, poor countries were exempted from paying the patent royalties.

Non Tariff Barriers:
WTO rules force countries to remove tariffs. Hence use of non tariff barriers has increased. Non tariff barriers can be :
1) To protect Health and Sanitation
2) To protect deletable natural resources.
3) Product Standards
4) Child Labor
5) Pollution
6) Restrictive Licenses


Kyoto Protocol
-4 greenhouse gases identified : CO2, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and Sulphur Hexafloride along with clouroflourocarbons.
-Developed Countries to reduce their GH emissions by 5.2% of their 1990 levels by 2012.
-Carbon Credit Trading would be used by industries. This approach will be better than levying pollution taxes on the industries by the govt.
-Climate Change bodies have predicted a change of 1-5 degree Celcius between 1990 and 2100

US Position
US did not sign the Kyoto Protocol, because developing countries like China and India have been exempted from signing it, even though China is the largest emitter of CO2 in the world and 2nd largest emitter of greenhouse gases (after US).

Note: It is predicted that due to global warming, malaria will increase worldwide by 3% because mosquitoes survive better in warmer world.