Today, on February 16, the Kyoto Protocol...

Russia features prominently in the Kyoto Protocol"s short (and far from remarkable) history. Although clearly the protocol could not have come into existence without Russia, its few supporters in the country had to spend many years fighting for it. During those years Andrei Illarionov, the former economic advisor to the then President Vladimir Putin was a staunch opponent of the protocol. However, the Duma and later on the Federation Council eventually ratified it in October 2004 and sent the document to the Secretariat of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Bonn. On February 16, 2005 it officially came into force.

In order to become reality the convention had to be ratified by the countries responsible for no less than 55% of all greenhouse emissions (mainly CO2). Before Russia joined the convention, this ratification quota was a little over 45%. Accounting for 17% of global emissions, we immediately transformed Kyoto into legal reality. We

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