Developing countries are committed to a 100% reduction in CFC production by 2010, and have yet to agree to any phase-out date for HCFCs.
The 1994 Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion of the United Nations Environment Programme states that one of the few significant steps the world can take towards speeding up the recovery of the ozone layer during the next fifty years is the total elimination of the emissions of HCFCs by the year 2004.*
Although European Community countries are committed to eliminating HCFCs by 2015, and some are planning a 1998 phase-out date, the current global HCFC phase-out dates are sorely inadequate.
Meanwhile, to replace their shrinking global markets in CFCs and HCFCs, the chemical industry is flooding the world with HFCs. Because HFCs are not ozone destroyers, they do not come under the purview of the Montreal Protocol. There are no binding controls on the emissions of HFCs at the present time. Such controls are very much needed. They should be immediately implemented through the United Nations Framework Climate Convention.
