Setting the Stage for Climate Action Under the Montreal Protocol

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https://eos.org/features/setting-the-stage-for-climate-action-under-the-montreal-protocol


Excerpt: Twelve papers formed the scientific basis for fast action to strengthen the treaty, which was already safeguarding stratospheric ozone, so it also protects the climate by reducing super pollutants. ...Joseph Farman and colleagues provided observational evidence of a stratospheric “ozone hole” over the Antarctic potentially linked to rising CFC concentrations [Farman et al., 1985], which ultimately led to international agreement on the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, better known simply as the Montreal Protocol. Twenty years later, every United Nations (UN) member state had become a party to the Montreal Protocol, ...and the ozone layer was well on the way to recovery [WorldMeteorological Organization (WMO), 2018; Ajavon et al., 2015]. Accomplishments like these inspired former secretary-general of the United Nations Kofi Anan to state that the Montreal Protocol was “perhaps the single most successful international agreement to date” [Hunter et al., 2022]. As it has turned out, the protocol not only has been enormously successful in curtailing the depletion of stratospheric ozone, but it has also taken on a second life in recent years as a de facto—and highly beneficial—climate treaty. ...it’s worthwhile to parse the science that went into formulating the Montreal Protocol and that led to its transformation into a climate treaty. ...The transition of the Montreal Protocol from a stratospheric ozone protection treaty to a climate treaty began in 2007. This is when atmospheric and climate scientist Guus J. M. Velders and colleagues ...reported that the Montreal Protocol and its phaseout of ODSs had done more to reduce greenhouse forcing and mitigate climate change than any other treaty, including the Kyoto Protocol [Velders et al., 2007].… 

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