Story Highlights
- Historical event
- 11 December 1997
- The famous Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gas emissions was adopted on this day in the year 1997 and it represents probably the most important thing that humanity has done so far in the fight against global warming.
On this day in 1997, a Protocol was agreed upon in the Japanese city of Kyoto, concerning the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. It was done in the organization of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, with the goal of preventing global warming. A process was then started, in which the countries of the world signed and ratified the Protocol. The first signatory state was Trinidad and Tobago, and the first to ratify the Protocol was Fiji.
In Kyoto it was stipulated that the Protocol officially comes into force only after the ratification by 55% of the contaminants, what happened on 16 February 2005, after Russia’s ratification. To this date, 191 countries have ratified the Protocol. The biggest issue is the fact that the United States has not ratified it, because they are the second largest producer of greenhouse gases (after China).
