Russia and the Kyoto ProtocolLaura A. Henry and Lisa McIntosh Sundstrom Russia and the Kyoto Protocol: Seeking an Alignment of Interests and Image

act propelled the agreement beyond its threshold requiring the participation of Annex 1 states representing 55 percent of 1990 greenhouse gas emissions and allowed the protocol to come into force on February 15, 2005. At ªrst glance, it is surprising that Russia turned out to be the key ratifying state of the Kyoto Pro-tocol. The Russian government has spent the last ªfteen years focused on eco-nomic recovery and development, and environmental regulation and treaties have fallen low on its list of priorities. In the 1990s, Russian representatives to climate change negotiations seemed more concerned about negotiating favor-able terms for their participation than forestalling climate change. The Russian delegation advocated that language be inserted in the treaty to differentiate par-ticipating countries ’ obligations based on their varying climatic, socioeconomic, and other conditions, and that transitional economies should be allowed a “a certain degree of ºexibility ” in meeting their emissions targets.1 Russia and Ukraine also insisted on the 1990 level of carbon emissions as their shared binding target, despite the fact that the two countries ’ greenhouse gas emissions had dropped substantially in the following decade due to the collapse of Soviet-era industries.2 More recently, Russia has become the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter, and the third largest energy con-sumer.3 Russia’s economic growth signiªcantly depends on the demand for carbon-based fuel. Yet for close analysts of the Kyoto Protocol and Russia, there were clear in-centives for Russia’s participation in the agreement. Russia experienced massiv