COP 27: All You Need to Know about the Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol on climate change, also known as the Kyoto Accord, was an international treaty that extended the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits state parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as possible.

The main purpose of this international climate treaty is to limit global temperature rise in this century to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.

It's also a legal instrument that solemnly commits States parties to cooperating in a spirit of solidarity in taking up the global challenge of clean and green environment and sustainable development.

The accord, which takes its name from the city of Kyoto, Japan, was adopted on 11 December 1997, and entered into force on 16 February 2005 at UN Climate Conference in Paris (COP21). There were 192 parties to the Protocol in 2020 at UK's Glasgow Climate Conference (COP26).

This international treaty only binds industrial states and places a heavier burden on them under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibility and respective capabilities”, because it recognizes that they are responsible for the current high levels of greenhouse emissions in the atmosphere which contribute to climate change.

In the late 1990s, the American administration of President Clinton inked the Kyoto Protocol to mitigate climate change, but Congress refused to confirm it later.

United Sates withdrew from the protocol 

In March 2001, the Gorge W Bush administration also balked at the agreement because it considered climate change as an international issue, affirming that the rest of the world should comply with new emissions standards and address global warming collectively.

It's worth mentioning that the First World Climate Conference took place on 12–23 February 1979 in Geneva and was sponsored by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO). It led to the establishment of the World Climate Programme (WCP) and the World Climate Research Programme. It also led to the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) by WMO and UNEP in 1988.