Activities implemented jointly: First report to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Accomplishments and descriptions of projects accepted under the U.S. Initiative on Joint Implementation

More than 150 countries are now Party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC), which seeks, as its ultimate objective, to stabilize atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases at a level that would prevent dangerous human interference with the climate system. As a step toward this goal, all Parties are to take measures to mitigate climate change and to promote and cooperate in the development and diffusion of technologies and practices that control or reduce emissions and enhance sinks of greenhouse gases. In the US view, efforts between countries or entities within them to reduce net greenhouse gas emissions undertaken cooperatively--called joint implementation (JI)--holds significant potential both for combating the threat of global warming and for promoting sustainable development. To develop and operationalize the JI concept, the US launched its Initiative on Joint Implementation (USIJI) in October 1993, and designed the program to attract private sector resources and to encourage the diffusion of innovative technologies to mitigate climate change. The USIJI provides a mechanism for investments by US entities in projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions worldwide and has developed a set of criteria for evaluating proposed projects for their potential to reduce net GHG emissions