Earth Equity News

Kazakhstan Approves Kyoto Protocol, Leaving U.S. as the Only Signer of the Treaty Not to Ratify. AFP, February 26, 2009. "The Kazakh parliament Thursday approved the Kyoto Protocol on fighting global warming, making it the last signatory to the UN-led treaty to ratify the measures other than the United States. Kazakhstan, whose economic growth over the past decade had been the strongest in Central Asia, had resisted ratifying the landmark climate change conventions... Kazakhstan signed the treaty in 1998, but had not signed it into effect until Thursday. The US administration of then president Bill Clinton signed the Protocol but never ratified it and his successor George W. Bush in 2001 withdrew the United States from the Protocol, saying it would cripple the US economy. The Turkish parliament had on February 5 overwhelmingly approved the Kyoto Protocol [which] expires in 2012."