Kyoto protocol came into force

In 1992, countries joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, as a framework for international cooperation to combat climate change by limiting average global temperature increases and the resulting climate change, and coping with impacts that were, by then, inevitable. By 1995, countries launched negotiations to strengthen the global response to climate change, and, two years later, adopted the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol legally binds developed country Parties to emission reduction targets. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ended in 2012. The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and will end in 2020. There are now 197 Parties to the Convention and 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The 2015 Paris Agreement, adopted in Paris on 12 December 2015, marks the latest step in the evolution of the UN climate change regime and builds on the work undertaken under the Convention. The Paris Agreement charts a new course in the global effort to combat climate change. The Paris Agreement seeks to accelerate and intensify the actions and investment needed for a sustainable low carbon future. Its central aim is to strengthen the global response to the threat of climate change by keeping a global temperature rise this century well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase even further to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The Agreement also aims ...

The Kyoto treaty against global warming came into force today with United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan urging the world to save the planet by adding to the limits on greenhouse gases and the UN environment chief stressing that many in the United States, the world’s top polluter, support the protocol despite the US Government’s opposition. The Kyoto treaty against global warming Under the Kyoto Protocol to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ( The European Union and Japan, for example, are to cut these emissions by 8 per cent and 6 per cent respectively. For many countries, achieving the Kyoto targets will be a major change that will require new policies and new approaches. “By itself, the Protocol will not save humanity from the dangers of climate change,” Mr. Annan “I call on the world community to be bold, to adhere to the Kyoto Protocol, and to act quickly in taking the next steps. There is no time to lose,” he added. UN Environment Programme ( “While the Government of the United States has decided against the Kyoto treaty, many individual states in America are adopting or planning to adopt greenhouse gas reductions in line with the spirit of the Protocol,” he said in a message. “Many businesses there are also active and keen to join the new emission trading schemes and markets opening up. The Government itself is also promoting higher energy efficiency and alternatives like hydrogen and solar,” he added. But he, too, echoed Mr. Annan’s call to do...

Here is a factfile on the world’s most ambitious and complex environmental accord: What is it? The Kyoto Protocol legally commits industrialised countries which have signed and ratified it to trim their output of six carbon gases. These “greenhouse” gases are trapping the Sun’s heat, causing the Earth’s surface to warm and thus changing the planet’s delicately-balanced climate system. Why was it created? The protocol can be traced to early scientific evidence in the 1970s and 80s about the peril of man-made global warming. Its framework was adopted on 12 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan, by 159 countries that are members of the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). But it took almost four more years of negotiations to complete its rulebook and then nearly three more years to get the deal ratified so that it could take effect. Which are the culprit gases? The Kyoto Protocol legally commits industrialised countries to trim their output of carbon gases The biggest villain is carbon dioxide, the byproduct of burning oil, gas and coal. The others are methane (mostly the result of agriculture), nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulphur hexafluoride. Which countries have to make cuts? Thirty-six western and Eastern European industrialised countries, which have to meet individual targets of reducing or stabilising output of greenhouse gas emissions by a timetable of 2008-12 as compared with their 1990 level. The Unit...

But that finding hasn’t stayed consistent, says Amanda Pendleton, who directs home trends research for Zillow. In Zillow’s most recent analysis of sales of 1.98 million homes listed in 2022, homes with solar panels did not command a premium, probably because of the exceptionally tight and expensive housing market, she suspects. In 2005, Japan’s prime minister made an urgent call to his top environmental official: The country needed to slash its greenhouse gas emissions. The Kyoto Protocol had just entered into force and Japan’s emissions were rising. To avoid an embarrassing failure to meet the climate treaty’s targets, environment minister Yuriko Koike in years not decades. Rather than appeal to people’s sense of environmental duty, Koike transformed their workplace culture instead. The ministry launched In public buildings, jackets were banned for government workers. Office thermostats were allowed to rise to 28 degrees Celsius (82 degrees Fahrenheit) in the summer. Researchers I share this story not because it is the solution to climate change — Japan’s culture is unique — but because it illustrates the types of solutions we should be exploring. Oftentimes, the most effective fixes come from rethinking old ideas, shifting social norms, and learning from others with very different experiences.