Doha Amendment

The Doha Amendment was adopted on 8 December 2012 at the 18th Conference of the Parties (COP18) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, held in Doha, Qatar. It amended the Kyoto Protocol by adding a second commitment period running from 1 January 2013 to 31 December 2020, bridging the gap between the Protocol's first commitment period (2008–2012) and the entry into force of the Paris Agreement.

Key features of the amendment include:

• New quantified emission limitation and reduction commitments (QELRCs) for participating Annex I parties, listed in a revised Annex B to the Protocol.
• A collective target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by at least 18% below 1990 levels over the eight-year period for those parties that took on commitments.
• Revisions to the list of greenhouse gases covered, adding nitrogen trifluoride (NF₃).
• Procedural updates allowing parties to adjust their targets upward during the commitment period.

Notably, several major emitters did not take on second-period commitments. Canada withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol entirely in 2012, while Japan, New Zealand, and Russia declined to accept new targets. The United States had never ratified Kyoto. As a result, the parties bound by the Doha Amendment represented only a small share of global emissions, primarily the European Union, Australia, and a handful of other developed economies.

The amendment required acceptance by three-fourths of the parties to the Kyoto Protocol (144 instruments of acceptance) to enter into force. This threshold was finally reached, and the Doha Amendment entered into force on 31 December 2020 — the very day its commitment period ended — rendering it largely symbolic in operational terms.

For Model UN delegates and researchers, the Doha Amendment is often cited as an example of the slow ratification problem in multilateral environmental agreements and as a transitional instrument that preceded the more flexible, universal architecture of the Paris Agreement.