“This shows that our policy is having an effect, and that the effort is paying off,” said environment minister Joke Schauvliege. The latest news is indicative of a trend, she said, in which emissions of greenhouse gases have been falling since 2004.

However Kyoto does not demand that the target be met once only; any reduction in greenhouse gases, to be meaningful, needs to be maintained. “Every sector – industry, construction, agriculture, transport and electricity – has to continue with their efforts,” the minister said. We also have to look forward to the post-Kyoto period when the targets become even tougher.” By 2020, Belgium as a whole will have to reduce its greenhouse gases by 15%.

The so-called Kyoto Protocol was a protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The protocol contains limits on emissions of four greenhouse gases which contribute to climate change – carbon dioxide, nitrous oxide, sulphur hexafluoride and methane, as well as two groups of gases. Among the countries that signed up to the framework convention, the US is the most notable country not to have ratified the Kyoto protocol, which means the targets are not legally binding on Washington.

Back in Flanders, the VMM considers the achievement of the Kyoto target to be a result of efforts by industry and the powergeneration sector – although the economic crisis certainly also had an effect. Emissions from the transport industry went up very slightly, and heating of buildings also went up, largely as a result of last year’s cold winter.

Schauvliege, in an interview with De Standaard newspaper, praised the “cradle-to-cradle” philosophy of Professor Michael Braungart, a German chemist and environmental activist who once lived in a tree as a green protest. Braungart advocates a society without waste, and therefore without the environmental dangers that waste creates. “Next year I’m in the chair of the European environment council,” Schauvliege said. “There will be an informal council on cradle-tocradle, and Braungart will work alongside us. I want investment in this area. If we can make a chair whose materials can be completely recycled, and export that sort of product, then we’re on the right road.”

• Elsewhere the Flemish green party Groen! were experiencing difficulties in finding a successor to veteran leader Mieke Vogels, who stepped down last month. Wouter De Vriendt, the favourite to replace her, withdrew from the race unexpectedly last week for “personal reasons”. As a compromise, party members have proposed a co-chair, occupied jointly by Tinne Vanderstraeten, one of the party’s rising stars, and Wouter Van Besien, vice-chair under Vogels. The party’s French-speaking counterpart, Ecolo, operates such an arrangement. But Van Besien has rejected the idea of a co-chair in favour of the existing chair/vice-chair arrangement. At a party congress last weekend, where the succession was hotly discussed, the party pledged to profile itself as radical, promising “achievable and comprehensible ideas that don’t scare people, but bring them hope”