Collapse prevented
Berlin Climate Summit meeting in the spring of 1995

A hundred and sixty UN member states achieved the breakthrough in climate protection twenty-five years ago. At the conference of parties to the Climate Convention which took place in the German capital from 28 March until 7 April 1995, these countries agreed to a binding protocol on reducing the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide. Emissions of CO2 had to be reduced by 20 per cent of their 1990 level by the year 2005. An overall reduction of 80 per cent by the year 2050 was prescribed. Over and above this the industrialised nations bound themselves to transfer know-how on energy saving and effective energy production to poor countries, doing so at no cost to the countries involved.

The protocol was not passed until the last minute. Thanks not least to the German delegation's negotiating skills, a majority of those participating were won over to reductions on the basis of a draft made by the alliance of small island states, AOSIS.

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