According to UNFCCC although industrialized nations have reduced emissions between 1990 and 2006, in recent years, between 2000 and 2006, greenhouse gas emissions have generally increased by 2.3%.

The above data excludes emissions/reductions from what is known as Land Use, Land Use Change, or Forestry sources (LULUCF). LULUCF uses can act as carbon sinks, absorbing and storing carbon dioxide (e.g. preserving or preventing deforestation), or can be a source of carbon emissions (e.g. deforestation, forest fires, clearing land, agricultural activities, etc).

If LULUCF emissions/reductions are factored in, the UNFCCC finds that greenhouse emissions from industrialized nations increased by 1%, less than the increase when excluding LULUCF.

However, as the UNFCCC also notes LULUCF emission reductions are not reliable or a good indicator for our purposes here: “the main drawback of LULUCF activities is their potential reversibility and non-permanence of carbon stocks as a result of human activities, (with the release of GHG into the atmosphere), disturbances (e.g. forest fires or disease), or environmental change, including climate change.”

This is despite an overall decrease of 4.7% since 1990. However, the more recent period suggests the rich country emission reductions are not sustainable. Furthermore, it looks worse considering a large part of this decrease is because of the collapse of the Soviet Union. As transition economies started to recover around 2000, emissions have started to rise.

Some nations with large reductions are also seeing limits, for example:

* UK (15.1% reduction) benefited by switching from coal to natural gas but that switch is largely in place now.
* Germany (18.2% reduction) has certainly invested in greenhouse gas emission reductions, but has been helped in large part because of reunification (East Germany, like much of eastern Europe and former Soviet states had economic problems, hence less emissions at the time).
* Other reductions have come in part from relocating manufacturing to other places such as China, which now claims at least one third of its emissions are because of production for others.