International

Kyoto Accords Take Effect

By Rob Gifford, Lawrence Sheets, Sylvia Poggioli

Published February 15, 2005 at 9:00 PM PST

This story was published more than 19 years ago.

An agreement to fight global warming goes into effect Wednesday in much of the world. The Kyoto treaty was ratified by 140 nations, with some notable exceptions -- the United States and Australia did not sign the treaty. Signatories are legally committed to meeting emissions targets by 2012.

International

Rob Gifford

Rob Gifford is the NPR foreign correspondent based in Shanghai.

Lawrence Sheets

Lawrence Scott Sheets concentrates on covering the Caucasus region of the former Soviet Union from his base in Tbilisi, Republic of Georgia. From 2001 to 2005, Sheets was NPR’s Moscow Bureau Chief, and covered the countries of former USSR, including Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia. Among major stories Sheets has covered for NPR have been the tragic siege of a school by a pro-Chechen separatist terror group in 2004 in which 330 mostly children were killed, the 6-week long "Orange Revolution" that brought down Ukraine’s old government in 2004, and the "Rose Revolution" in Georgia in 2003. Sheets has also reported for NPR from Iran and Afghanistan. He covered the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan during 2001 and 2002, including the bloody Taliban uprising at a fortress in Mazar e Sharif in which hundreds of people died.Sheets’ reports can be heard on NPR's , All Things Considered, Day to Day, and Weekend Edition.

Sylvia Poggioli

Sylvia Poggioli is senior European correspondent for NPR's International Desk covering political, economic, and cultural news in Italy, the Vatican, Western Europe, and the Balkans. Poggioli's on-air reporting and analysis have encompassed the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, the turbulent civil war in the former Yugoslavia, and how immigration has transformed European societies.