UN Secretary-General António Guterres encourages nearly 50 countries around the world to ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, an international agreement adopted by 198 parties in 2019 to reduce hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) emissions, which are gases used in refrigeration and air conditioning systems, heat pumps, fire extinguishers, aerosols and solvents.
This agreement was adopted in Kigali (Rwanda) as an amendment to the 1987 Montreal Protocol on the reduction and production of substances that deplete the ozone layer.
According to Guterres, its “full ratification and implementation” could prevent “up to 0.5 ºC of warming until 2100, a figure that could double if the abandonment of gases that heat the planet is combined with energy efficiency measures in refrigeration equipment.” .
Guterres makes these considerations in a message on the occasion of the International Day for the Preservation of the Ozone Layer, which is celebrated this Saturday.
The head of the UN indicates in his message, collected by Servimedia, that "the international treaties to protect the ozone layer have marked a before and after in the protection of people and the planet." “In them you can see the power of multilateralism. “Those treaties should inspire hope that, together, we will be able to avoid the worst of climate change and build a sustainable and resilient world,” he adds.
Guterres indicates that “it is still possible” to limit the increase in temperature on the planet to 1.5 ºC compared to the pre-industrial era if climate action accelerates “immediately and drastically.” “I have proposed a Climate Solidarity Pact and an Acceleration Agenda to help achieve this,” he says.
In this sense, it urges “all countries” that have not done so to ratify the Kigali Amendment, something already done by 151 States and the EU (Spain ratified it on June 9).
“And I call on governments, as well as business leaders, civil society, academia, youth groups, local communities and others, to step up their efforts to achieve real change and ensure that developing countries have the necessary support for this,” he adds.
The ozone layer is a fragile strip of gas that protects the Earth from the harmful effects of the sun's rays, thus helping to preserve life on the planet. However, the use of certain chemicals for years damaged it, endangering our own existence and that of the rest of the living beings on the planet.
Ozone, which occurs naturally in small quantities in the atmosphere, is made up of three oxygen atoms instead of the two that make up the much more abundant molecular oxygen.
High in the stratosphere, 10 to 30 miles above the Earth's surface, the ozone layer acts as a sunscreen, shielding Earth from potentially harmful ultraviolet radiation, which can cause skin cancer, cataracts, and debilitate the immune system, as well as damaging plants. Ozone is also one of the primary greenhouse gases that regulate the planet's temperature.
First detected in the 1970s, the Antarctic ozone hole forms in the southern hemisphere at the end of winter, between August and September, when the Sun's rays return after months of polar nights.
Sunlight initiates catalytic reactions that produce chemically active forms of chlorine and bromine that concentrate over the South Pole during the winter, rapidly destroying ozone molecules. In 1985, the Vienna Convention for the Protection of the Ozone Layer was adopted, which was the first collective action to reduce the hole that had been generated in the Earth's atmosphere of Antarctica.
An analysis by a United Nations-backed expert group and presented at the 103rd annual meeting of the American Meteorological Society concludes that the ozone layer is on track to recover over the next four decades and the global phase-out of the chemicals that deplete it already contribute to the mitigation of climate change.
Experts confirmed that the progressive elimination of 99% of banned substances that deplete the ozone layer has managed to protect it and has contributed to a notable recovery in the upper stratosphere and to reducing people's exposure to harmful ultraviolet radiation of the sun.
