Giving Compass' Take:

• Smithsonian reflects on the two decades since the Kyoto Protocol was signed; though many consider it a failure, it still got us one step closer to an international plan of action on climate change.

• The political environment was much different in 1997 than it is now. What parts of the Kyoto Protocol remain relevant — and how can we take action on them?

• Here's how foundations are prioritizing efforts to fight climate change.

It's been 12 years since the Kyoto Protocol — the first international effort to cut back greenhouse gas emissions and slow the pace of human-induced climate change — took effect. On the face of it, the goals of this far-reaching treaty were ambitious: “It bound member states to act in the interests of human safety even in the face of scientific uncertainty,” writes the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change.

Today many consider the historic agreement, signed in 1997, to be a bit of a bust. Two decades after it was written, world economies continue to rely heavily on fossil fuels, and greenhouse gases in the atmosphere continue to rise to unprecedented levels. But it isn’t that simple to cast judgment on this treaty, which took concrete steps at a time when there was far less scientific evidence for human-made climate change.

In fact, Kyoto helped lay the groundwork for current global efforts to address climate change, says Ralph Winkler, an economist at the University of Bern in Switzerland who studies climate change policy. It’s true that the treaty hasn’t dramatically reduced global carbon dioxide emissions, nor caused any noticeable change in the composition of Earth’s warming atmosphere. But that wasn’t the goal to begin with, Winkler says.

“To expect that the Kyoto Protocol would more or less save the climate would have been a very naive expectation in the first place,” says Winkler.

Read the full article about the Kyoto protocol and climate policy by Laura Poppick at Smithsonian.com.