Protocol. Building on the framework of the Convention, the Kyoto Protocol broke new ground with its legally-binding constraints on greenhouse gas emissions and its innovative mechanisms aimed at cutting the cost of curbing emissions. Today, 186 countries (including the European Community) are Parties to the Convention, more than most any other environmental treaty, and the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol is expected soon.
Increasing scientific evidence of human interference with the climate system, coupled with growing public concern over global environmental issues, began to push climate change onto the political agenda in the mid-1980s. Recognising the needs of policymakers for authoritative and up-to-date scientific information, the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) established the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in 1988. That same year, following a proposal by the Government of Malta, the United Nations General Assembly took up the issue of climate change for the first time and adopted resolution 43/53 on the ?Protection of global climate for present and future generations of mankind?.
In 1990, the IPCC issued its First Assessment Report, confirming that climate change was indeed a threat and calling for a global treaty to address the problem. This call was echoed by the Ministerial Declaration of the Second World Climate Conference, held in Geneva in October/November of that year. The UN General Assembly responded to these calls in December of 1990, formally launching negotiations on a framework convention on climate change by its resolution 45/212. These negotiations were conducted by an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC), chaired by Jean Ripert (France).
The INC met for the first time in February 1991 and, after just 15 months of negotiations, governments adopted the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change at the INC?s resumed fifth session on 9 May 1992. The Convention was opened for signature on 4 June 1992 at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), the so-called Earth Summit, in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and came into force on 21 March 1994. A decade after its adoption, 186 governments (including the European Community) are now Parties to the Convention and it is approaching universal membership.
Since the Convention's entry into force, Parties have met annually in the Conference of the Parties (COP) to monitor its implementation and continue talks on how best to tackle climate change. The many decisions taken by the COP at its annual sessions now make up a detailed rulebook for the effective implementation of the Convention. When they adopted the Convention, however, governments knew that its commitments would not be sufficient to seriously tackle climate change. At the first COP (Berlin, March/April 1995), in a decision known as the Berlin Mandate, Parties therefore launched a new round of talks to decide on stronger and more detailed commitments for industrialized countries. After two and a half years of intense negotiations, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted at COP 3 in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997.
The complexity of the negotiations, however, meant that considerable unfinished business remained even after the Kyoto Protocol itself was adopted. The Protocol sketched out the basic features of its mechanisms and compliance system, for example, but did not flesh out the all-important rules of how they would operate. Although 84 countries signed the Protocol indicating that they intended to ratify, Preliminary version many were reluctant to actually do so and bring the Protocol into force before having a clearer picture of the treaty's rulebook.
A new round of negotiations was therefore launched at COP 4 (Buenos Aires, November 1998) to draft the Kyoto Protocols rulebook. This round, based on an ambitious work programme known as the Buenos Aires Plan of Action, linked together negotiations on the Protocols rulebook with talks on implementation issues under the Convention (such as finance and technology transfer). The deadline for negotiations under the Buenos Aires Plan of Action was set as COP 6 (The Hague, November 2000). However, the volume of work facing that session, and the difficult political issues at stake, led to a breakdown in negotiations.
Talks reconvened at a resumed session of COP 6 in Bonn, Germany, in July 2001. Here, governments struck a political deal the so-called Bonn Agreements signing off on the most politically controversial issues under the Buenos Aires Plan of Action. A few months later at COP 7 (Marrakesh, October/ November 2001), negotiators built on the Bonn Agreements to finally adopt a comprehensive package of decisions known as the Marrakesh Accords containing a detailed rulebook for the Kyoto Protocol, as well as important advances in the implementation of the Convention and its rulebook. The adoption of the Marrakesh Accords thus marked the close of a major negotiating cycle. Climate change is a long-term problem, however, and the climate change process is far from over. Governments will continue to meet to discuss how best to implement the Convention and the Protocol, and to decide on next steps to combat climate change.
