trapping carbon dioxide by 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2008-12 by curbing use of coal, oil and natural gas and shifting to cleaner energies like solar or wind power. To come into force, the pact needed to be ratified by countries accounting for at least 55 percent of developed nations' greenhouse gas emissions. Russia, which accounts for 17 percent of global emissions, became the key to Kyoto after Washington pulled out saying the pact was too costly and unfairly exempted large, rapidly industrialising countries such as China and India. Russia signed the Kyoto Protocol in 1999. But it agreed to ratify the treaty only in exchange for European Union agreement on Moscow's admission to the World Trade Organisation. Joke Waller-Hunter of the Bonn-based Climate Change Secretariat, which services the protocol, said only four industrialised countries have not yet ratified the Kyoto Protocol: Australia, Liechtenstein, Monaco and the United States.
