UNFCCC looks into plan B

As 2012 draws closer and closer the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) officially started thinking about a contingency plan, in case no agreement on a Kyoto Protocol successor were struck in time. The document published on the UNFCCC website focuses on the legal implications that a gap between the current international agreement and its possible successor could entail.
Under current rules three quarter of the parties to the UNFCCC (143 of the 190 countries) must accept the agreement to make it binding, and in order to avoid a gap with the current scheme, this acceptance should take place by October 12, 2012. Moreover, even once an international framework had been agreed upon, it would take a long time to ratify at national-parliament level, as the Kyoto Protocol ratification process has shown, which could undermine the continuity with the old scheme. Thus, in order to facilitate the process of ratification, instruments such as tacit acceptance or automatic opt-in after acceptance could be useful as well as other modification of the ratification amendments, or even the possibility to reduce the required majority for approving a new treaty, or the possibility to simply extend current commitments. These modifications would be considered provisional and are currently feasible under international law.

The text of the document can be found at http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2010/awg13/eng/10.pdf