On December 11, 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was created during the Third Conference of the Parties (COP 3) to the Climate Change Convention, held in Kyoto, Japan. It is a treaty linked to the convention, which defines the responsibilities and obligations of the various parties involved, as a result of the increase of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and their consequences.
According to the treaty, so that industrialized countries that had ratified it could meet the targets to which they were subject, they had to reduce a percentage of gases, for the 2008-2012 period, that, by the end of such commitment period, would have corresponded, in all, to an average reduction of approximately 2,800 million tones.
To this end, the Protocol, which entered into force on February 16, 2005, established three innovative international market mechanisms. It is within this context that the clean development mechanism (CDM) is inserted, as a result of a Brazilian proposal, which, in addition to the certainty of industrial containment of the industrialized countries, provides opportunities for sustainable social and economic development for the growing countries.
The Kyoto Protocol was extended to 2020 during COP 18 in Doha, Qatar. The Paris Agreement, signed during the COP 21, in 2015, will replace the protocol.