The United Nations has not had much to celebrate recently. Perhaps that is why it has made such a fanfare about the Kyoto protocol, the UN-brokered treaty on climate change that comes into force on Wednesday.

The agreement requires developed countries to reduce their dependence on fossil fuels, which produce the greenhouse gases blamed for causing climate change. The treaty, drawn up in 1997, is widely considered the most important international agreement on environmental issues. But it quickly ran into trouble as developed nations balked at the difficulty of complying with it. The US rejected the treaty as unfair and its future looked in doubt until Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, finally ratified it late last year, after pressure from the European Union.