The upper house of Russia's parliament ratified on Wednesday the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change, the Itar-Tass news agency reported.

The Federation Council, which voted 139-1 with one abstention to endorse the protocol, will send it to President Vladimir Putin for the final stamp of approval.

The protocol, originally adopted in Kyoto on December 11, 1997, was signed by Russia in New York on March 11, 1999.

The lower house of Russia's parliament, the State Duma, ratified the protocol on October 22.

The protocol, which has been rejected by the United States and Australia, needs ratification by 55 industrialized nations accounting for at least 55 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in 1990.

Russia's ratification will bring the number of countries that have ratified the protocol to 55, the threshold needed for making it operational.

Once the protocol takes effect, industrialized countries will have until 2012 to cut their collective emissions of six key greenhouse gases to 5.2 percent below the 1990 level.

The protocol also envisages a mechanism of trade in emission quotas, which means that an obligation of some or another country not to exceed a certain amount of emissions is interpreted as a quota that the country can sell.

The 1990 amount of Russia's greenhouse gas emissions, 17 percent of the global emissions, was defined as basic for the initial period of the effect of the protocol, namely from 2008 to 2012.

The Russian Hydrometeorology Committee's chief Alexander Bedritsky told the Federation Council that Russia would try to defend its interests during the upcoming talks on Russia's subsequent obligations.

However, Russia's participation in the Kyoto Protocol will require budget expenditures on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Most measures would be carried out in the program Energy-Efficiency Economy for 2002-2005 and for the years to 2010, Bedritsky added.

The government's prognoses proceed from the assumption that development of production will be based on energy-efficiency technologies, he said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 27, 2004)