and created an economic boom, in which Venezuela came to realize the true potential of the massive reserves of “Black Gold” that laid in wait under the soil. Venezuela is ranked in the top ten for crude oil producers in the world. In 2009 alone Venezuela exported $57.6 billion worth of petroleum. In 2004 Ana Elisa Osorio, the nations minister of the Environment and Natural Resources, signed the Kyoto Protocol, with the intention of decreasing greenhouse gas emission to 5% below there previous green house emissions in 1990.
The Prime Minister announced the creation of new departments (Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARN), Energy and Mines, Planning and Development, Agriculture and Lands, Infrastructure, as well as the national oil company, Petroleos de Venezuela ) to help with monitoring the decrease in emissions. Although this was a valiant attempt by the UN to set a standard of greener living it was a little far fetched. Venezuela has such a vast, rich quantity of oil that it was difficult to reduce the industry because if it wanted to be an international competitor in the world market it couldn’t slow down on its biggest moneymaker. So oil production eventually increased during the time under the Kyoto protocol, and coincidently so did Venezuelan green house gas emissions. Emissions fluctuated between lows of 5.1 and highs of 7.6 metric tons of CO2. When 2008 rolled around Venezuela had dropped from 6.2 MT to an even 6 MT showing a drop of 3% in greenhouse gas
emissions. This wasn’t the target but it was still upheld an impressive employment growth which usually plagues Latin American nations. Based on the efforts and results from 1990 to 2005 I cant recommend that Venezuela partake in the re-ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. A reduction of 10% emissions is an unreachable goal, and will only become counter productive in the efforts put forth to improve the Venezuelan economy. We would be fighting against our strongest source of income to appease some environmentalists at the UN. We strongly support an ever-growing green word, and have sectioned off almost 33% of our bio-diverse forests to National Parks along with 70% under some sort of conservation supervision, so this is not a blow to our relation ship with earth because that is something that is cherished by every Venezuelan. It only means that diplomatically it is an unwise decision and will only negatively affect the country.