POSITIVE CORNER #10 – The Ozone Hole: From Scourge to Success Story

In the 1980s, the ozone hole came to symbolise an environmental problem that had spiralled out of control: satellite images showed a dramatically thinned ozone layer over Antarctica, the media ran headlines such as ‘Mortal danger in a can’, and the term CFCs became a global warning signal. Today, four decades later, the same monitoring programmes tell a different story: the ozone layer is recovering – slowly, but measurably. This positive news is no coincidence, but the result of one of the most successful pieces of global environmental policy: the 1987 Montreal Protocol.

ref. 1: https://www.mpg.de/23463874/world-ozone-day-2024

ref. 2: https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/smallest-and-shortest-lived-ozone-hole-5-years-closes

source: https://atmosphere.copernicus.eu/2019s-ozone-hole-context

The recovery of the ozone layer is more than just a footnote in the natural sciences – it is a real-time lesson in politics. At a time when environmental and climate policy is often perceived as slow, contentious and ineffective, the ozone hole provides a counterexample illustrating the positive power of the interplay between

• scientific evidence,

• global cooperation and

• technological change,

which is vital for tackling today’s global challenges.