Stephen O. Andersen protecting the stratospheric ozone layer. At EPA he rose to Deputy Director for Stratospheric Ozone Protection and then transferred to the Climate Protection Partnerships Division, where he was Director of Strategic Climate Projects until his retirement from government in 2009. The timing of Andersen’s arrival at EPA was fortuitous. 1987 proved to be a watershed moment in the effort to stop ozone depletion, which increased risks of skin cancer and threatened to wipe out crops and ecosystems, among many adverse impacts. The Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer was agreed on 16 September 1987 and created a
Montreal Protocol Mexico following with a similar proposal in 2010. After seven years of negotiations, in October 2016 at the 28th Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol in Kigali, the Parties to the Montreal Protocol adopted the Kigali Amendment whereby the Parties agreed to phasedown HFCs under the Montreal Protocol. The amendment to the legally-binding Montreal Protocol will ensure that industrialised countries bring down their HFC production and consumption by at least 85 per cent compared to their annual average values in the period 2011-2013. A group of developing countries including China, Brazil and South Africa are mandated to reduce