1. The Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is an element of quite harmonious system of multilateral international treaties on the environmental protection. Foreign policy line of the Russian Federation is oriented to active, or, rather, leading role in the system. It is possible to say that this sphere of international collaboration constitutes the most favorable and advantageous part of this country's relations with the outside. Here we are still taken into consideration. Russia has actively participated in the UNFCCC preparation and the elaboration of scientific grounds for the theory of anthropogenic impact on climate system within the scope of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The Kioto Protocol as it is also turns out to be the result of efforts of Russian negotiators and experts. In other words Russia is one of the main participants in the international process, aimed at the forming of global policy in the field of climate change. Moreover, Russia has a casting vote in the process more than anywhere else. Without the decision of the Russian Federation to ratify the Kyoto Protocol this international document will never come into force. But ratification of the Kyoto Protocol in Russia opens the green corridor for it with all following consequences. Potentially this not only makes Russia the leader of the whole process but as well gives it the status of "savior" of the Kyoto Protocol, and in the eyes of developing countries - status of a great industrial state striving against the anthropogenic impact on climate system not theoretically but in practice. Thus, political benefits of the Protocol ratification are obvious and substantial. Provided absence of the economic costs and most probably existence of the economic effect of country's participation in the Kyoto Protocol, delay in its ratification is no other than a gross political error.


2. Besides, the Kyoto Protocol has its value and indubitable urgency which lie in its pioneer nature fusing economic and social mechanisms in order to solve environmental problem. This international legal document has every prospect of success in becoming a base for further forming of new global policy in the sphere of solving global environmental problems. Market mechanisms of regulating greenhouse gases emission, specified in the Protocol, may be perfectly used as a model for elaborating similar mechanisms in other environmental treaties. On the whole Kyoto Protocol implementation could become one of the first steps to really stable development. The Russian Federation being virtually an environmental donor of the global level should be interested in the steepest progress of the idea of economic compensation for the environmental benefits, one way or the other included in the Kyoto Protocol. This also proves the necessity of its ratification in the Russian Federation.