News

The Strategic Planning Committee of the Government has approved the concept of the Climate Change Law which underpins the need for introduction of this legislation and lays down its basic provisions. The Ministry of Environment has developed the concept on the basis of the experience of Denmark, the United Kingdom, Norway, Latvia and other European Union countries in the regulation of relations associated with the efforts to combat climate change.

The area of above activities in Lithuania is now governed only by separate legislative acts. As a result, regulation is fragmentary and does not cover all measures and ways to reduce the quantities of greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere. Problems also arise when attempting to implement the above measures at the lowest cost possible, since the conditions important to economic activities must be established by laws, not by subordinate legislation. The Climate Change Law will fill the existing legislative gaps.

Also, it will help our country successfully meet its international obligations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere and contribute to the global efforts to protect the global climate system against the impact of human activities. Lithuania assumed these obligations by ratifying the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) along with the Kyoto Protocol to the Convention. During the first period of the implementation of the Protocol's requirements Lithuania is committed to cut its overall greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere to 8% below 1990 levels by 2008 - 2012.

The adoption of the Climate Change Law would remove any obstacles to the use of the instruments to implement the above obligations. They include international greenhouse gas emission allowance trading, joint project implementation and clean development. Although the emissions trading scheme is functioning in our country, Lithuanian companies find it rather difficult to carry out joint implementation and clean development projects due to insufficient legal regulation, because currently it is not legislation but subordinate legislation that imposes requirements to limit greenhouse gas emissions as well as the obligation to obtain authorizations to discharge those gases into the atmosphere, i.e. the right to buy and sell the agreed allowances of greenhouse gas emissions in the market.

The Climate Change Law will define the rights and responsibilities of the Government or the institutions authorized by it in implementing the Kyoto Protocol obligations and EU requirements. It will establish the main requirements for greenhouse gas emission monitoring, the national register of greenhouse gas emissions and the national scheme for the allocation of emission allowances, create the necessary conditions to use emission credits generated through investments in joint implementation and clean development projects, define the allocation of emission allowances and ensure the availability of information on climate change regulation processes to the public as well as the opportunity for citizens to take part in them.

16 August 2007

Government Press Office