SINGAPORE - After years of delays, a world plan to fight global warming went into force on February 16, feted by its backers as a lifeline for the planet but rejected as an economic straitjacket by the United States and Australia.
The 141-nation Kyoto Protocol formally took effect at 0500 GMT and a ceremony in the ancient Japanese city of Kyoto, where the pact was signed in 1997, was set for later in the day.
Green groups and the United Nations say it is a crucial first step in trying to limit the onslaught of higher temperatures, rising seas and greater extremes of weather.
But some developed nations say the pact is unfair because it excludes major developing nations India, China and Brazil, whose growing economies comprise more than a third of humanity.
UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called for global unity.
"Climate change is a global problem. It requires a concerted global response," he said in pre-recorded remarks to be aired during a ceremony in Kyoto later on February 16.
"I call on the world community to be bold, to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, and to act quickly in taking the next steps. There is no time to lose!"
The pact is the first legally binding plan to tackle climate change, building on a scheme launched at an Earth Summit in 1992 to stabilize emissions at 1990 levels by 2000, a goal not met.
In Sydney, ice sculptures of kangaroos and koalas melted during a protest by green groups over Australia's refusal to ratify the pact. Prime Minister John Howard says Kyoto is bad for industry and unfairly excludes rapidly growing India and China.
Australian Conservation Foundation Vice-President Peter Christoff berated Howard for his stance.
'Shameful'
"It's time that he actually got involved in the only game in town when it comes to dealing with climate change globally. Australia has just completely missed out. I think it is shameful," he told protesters in the southern city of Melbourne.
In China, home to 1.3 billion people and one of the world's fastest-growing economies, a man dressed as a sad-faced polar bear took to Beijing's streets as part of Greenpeace China's campaign to explain Kyoto and the impact of climate change.
Greenpeace expert Yu Jie said that if the climate continued to change at its current pace, two-thirds of China's glaciers would disappear by mid-century, and with them the main water source for several of the country's largest rivers.
Kyoto aims to brake a rise in temperatures widely blamed on human emissions of heat-trapping gases that may spur ever more hurricanes, floods and droughts and could drive thousands of species of animals and plants to extinction by 2100.
Under the deal, developed nations have to cut emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels in power plants, factories and cars, by 5.2 per cent below 1990 levels by 2008-12.
"Kyoto gives us a very solid basis for our climate policy," said Klaus Toepfer, head of the UN Environment Programme, praising it as a small first step towards preventing what could be catastrophic climate change in coming decades.
But Kyoto has been weakened by a 2001 pullout by the United States, the world's top polluter and source of almost a quarter of human emissions of carbon dioxide.
US President George W Bush has dismissed Kyoto as too costly and misguided for excluding developing nations from the first phase to 2012. His administration once denounced it as "an unrealistic and ever-tightening regulatory straitjacket".
Kyoto backers say rich nations are probably the main cause of a 0.6 degree centigrade (1 Fahrenheit) rise in world temperatures since the Industrial Revolution and so should take the lead by cutting use of fossil fuels and shifting to cleaner energy such as wind and solar.
The Asian Development Bank vowed on February 15 to provide more funds to help its member countries implement projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Kristian Tangen, head of Point Carbon analysis group in Oslo, said there was a real risk the pact could collapse after 2012. Big developing nations were unlikely to sign up after 2012 unless the United States joined, he said.
Howard said the pact was useless in its present form.
"Until such time as the major polluters of the world, including the United States and China, are made part of the Kyoto regime it is next to useless and indeed harmful for a country such as Australia to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol," he told parliament on February 16.
Even if fully implemented, Kyoto would cut a projected rise in temperatures by just 0.1 degree centigrade by 2100, according to UN projections, tiny compared to forecasts by a UN climate panel of an overall rise of 1.4-5.8 degrees centigrade by 2100.
(Agencies via Xinhua)
