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• Kyoto protocol
  Kyoto protocol

  noun

  an amendment to the United Nations international treaty on global warming in which participating nations commit to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide, negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997
• Kyoto Protocol
  Kyoto Protocol

  An agreement on global warming reached by the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. The major industrial nations pledged to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012. (See greenhouse effect.) Although the American delegation signed the protocol, the United States Senate has refused to ratify the treaty, mainly because it believes that the targeted reductions are so steep that they will produce a severe economic slump.

Kyoto protocol

British  

noun

1. an amendment to the United Nations international treaty on global warming in which participating nations commit to reducing their emissions of carbon dioxide, negotiated in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997

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Kyoto Protocol Cultural  

1. An agreement on global warming reached by the United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997. The major industrial nations pledged to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases between 2008 and 2012. (See greenhouse effect.) Although the American delegation signed the protocol, the United States Senate has refused to ratify the treaty, mainly because it believes that the targeted reductions are so steep that they will produce a severe economic slump.

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Attacking the U.S. position as selfish, European governments have been extremely critical of the U.S. refusal to ratify the protocol.

Example Sentences

However he has had rows with the US in the past, criticising their decision to leave an earlier climate treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, when he was head of the IPCC.

From BBC • Dec. 9, 2025

Almost 30 years after more than 150 nations became party to the Kyoto Protocol, which required some Western nations to cut carbon dioxide emissions, climate change has become an increasingly urgent problem.

From New York Times • Jun. 18, 2024

In the late 1990s she led the first U.N. climate conferences and the Kyoto Protocol.

From Scientific American • Oct. 25, 2023

Large-scale intergovernmental agreements like the 1997 Kyoto Protocol — in which more than 150 countries committed to reducing their greenhouse gas emissions — got more coverage than individual actions in textbooks across the decades.

From Salon • Dec. 21, 2022

“The flexibility that defines the Kyoto Protocol was very much designed in the USA,” he said.

From Seattle Times • Nov. 4, 2022