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Russia, Japan against Kyoto Protocol

Russia and Japan have said they would not support a new round of the Kyoto Protocol that requires developed nations to cut carbon emissions through 2012.

“Russia will not participate in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol,” Alexander Bedritsky, an adviser to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, said at the UN climate change conference in the Mexican resort of Cancun on Thursday.

Japan has also stood firm against the protocol, insisting that a new round should involve all major emitters.

China, India, Brazil and South Africa pressed industrialized nations to agree to new restrictions on fossil fuel emissions after current ones in the Kyoto Protocol expire in 2012.

Japan, Canada and Russia refused the treaty, saying extending the accord misses the point because the world’s two biggest emitters, the United States and China, are not part of it.

China has no obligations because it is a developing nation, while the United States rejected the treaty.

Japanese Environment Minister Ryu Matsumoto said the Kyoto Protocol “only covers 27 percent of global energy related CO2 emissions” and that his nation “will not associate itself with setting the second commitment period.”

Russia’s ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in 2004 allowed the treaty to come into force because enough emitters had joined.

Unlike most Kyoto countries, Russia was actually producing less carbon than in 1990 — the baseline for cuts — due to industrial decline since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

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