Unfccc. The United Nations Framework Convention On Climate Change

The UNFCCC was established in 1994 to address climate change at an international level. Since then, the parties to the convention (including the EU) meet annually in Conferences of the Parties. The Kyoto Protocol (1997) set an obligation for developed countries to lower greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, through setting national targets, using 1990 as a base level. The UK has been one of only a few countries to comply with the international obligation and has reduced GHG emissions since 1990.

The UNFCCC is working with the various governments around the world to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases emitted into the atmosphere to keep the planet from warming more than 2ºC above pre-industrial temperatures (Watts, 2015). The most noted of the work is the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) meetings that began with COP1 in Berlin back in 1995. The COP3 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, even though it wasn’t fully accepted by all member nations. The COP21 was an effort to legally bind members to their submitted plans of Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), defining what level of greenhouse gas production each nation would commit to not exceeding from 2025-2030. Prior to the INDCs, a bleak outlook was forecast in 2009-2010 of global temperature rising between 4-5ºC. That figure was restated by the UNFCCC prior to the COP21 in Paris, to below 3ºC, due to the commitments of the INDCs (Watts, 2015).

That same year, Obama reached a climate agreement in which China and the U.S. agreed to significantly reduce carbon emissions. That accord helped launch the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2015, at which almost every country in the world agreed to control its emissions and create a plan to diminish them.

The Kyoto Protocol is a binding international agreement, which began in Kyoto, Japan in 1997. As of June 2013, there were a total of 192 parties participating in the Kyoto Protocol, Canada was no longer one of them. Canada was one of the first to sign the agreement, in 1998; more than 4 years later, Canada formally approved the Kyoto Accord, in 2002 ("CBC.ca - Timeline: Canada and Kyoto"). This meant Canada would have to decrease its emissions, by 6% in comparison to 1990 levels (461 Mt), by the year 2012. Despite some efforts, Canada failed to meet these requirements and in fact increased total emissions by roughly 24% by the year 2008. Canada formally withdrew from the Kyoto Accord in 2011, avoiding

In 1997, The Kyoto Protocol was adopted to address climate change and reduce greenhouse gas emissions (EPA, n.d.). In spite of the international treaty, half of participating nations, including Canada failed to reducing its Co2 emissions (Clark, D., 2012, November 26).

Climate change is one of the most concerning issue in the history foriegn policy. It encompuses not only the United states but the entire world. Which is why it is hard to create procedures and establish alliances concerning global climate change because greenhouse admission are not created by the actions of one nation. Addressing climate change is going to be a massive task. Every nations who emitts green house gasses must become part of some sort of a global agreement. This agreement will require new thinking when it comes to foriegn policy. The United States has recently created a Task force to deal with climate change. The task force recomends creating a treaty between the world's biggest emitters including China

The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty, which enforces the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. The treaty does not account for ozone depleting substances since they are covered under the Montreal Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol was adopted in Kyoto, Japan, on 11 December 1997 and took effect on 16 February 2005.

The Kyoto Protocol is an international agreement on Climate Change. The major feature of the Kyoto Protocol is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This amounts to an average of five per cent over the five-year period 2008-2012.

As, arguably, the only global power at the time, the United States spearheaded the dialogue on climate change. At some points the United States has trouble convincing other nations to come on board. This can be seen in documents three and four, where Japan is having some trepidations over industrialized nations involvement in climate change versus developing nations. It can especially be seen in document three where they clearly have different perspectives on where they see climate change in the long term. Japan is also skeptical of many of the emission trading 's the United States takes part in because they are not quite sure how it would work and what position they would play. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was particularly worried about China 's role in this agreement also, they did not want to carry out strict reductions while China continued to pollute the air around them. In comparison, document nine also centers around the United States as it tries to get the most out of the present climate change agreement, by working with Ambassador Raul A Estrada-Oyuela. Documents three and four are more focused on the beginning of various climate change treaties the United States was trying to conceive. While document 4 focuses on a climate agreement after Kyoto that would be in the United States ' best interest.

Subsequent conferences of parties (COP) meetings have proved to bear little fruit, apart from the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, which remains the contractual international climate change regime. However, even Kyoto was not ubiquitous, as it remains conspicuously unsigned by the US. Kyoto set binding target levels for reduction of emissions for developed countries and instituted a scheme that would lead to an eventual wider policy. Central to the Kyoto Protocol is the notion, which first emerged out of the Rio Earth Summit of 1992, of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR), which acknowledges the inherent differences between developed and developing countries in their historical responsibilities as well as their respective abilities to combat climate change but calls for a united global effort. The idea is that developed countries proportionally must assume more of the emissions reduction burden as they are responsible for the historical contributions of CO2 to climate change during their industrialization processes, as well as provide “financial assistance and technological transfers” to developing countries. This tenant of CBDR has remained central to each additional international climate negotiation, but has proved to be an unsuccessful governing framework

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was an agreement that was meant to keep emissions to a low enough level that they would not affect the future of the climate. The annex 1 nations were expected to maintain their emission levels at that or lower than 1990 levels. Non-annex 1 countries, however, were not bound to any restrictions or action pertaining to their emissions, and in addition to that, no mandatory scale or limit was added to the amount of time that was allowed until actions were taken. (UNFCCC)

The climate change impacts of greenhouse gases threaten the economic development and environmental quality. These threats indicate that all nations regardless their economic growth should work collaboratively to reduce the emission to a certain level. Hare et al. (2011) argued that “climate change is a collective action problem” thus requires a global coordination from all countries. This indicates that actions from several countries would never be sufficient to address the climate change problem. If a global target to limit warming to 2°C or below is about to achieve (UNFCCC 2010, p.4) a broad range of participation is required (Hare et al., 2011). However, the increasing complexity of negotiation processes is inevitable. Each country will pursue its own interests during the

“The Kyoto Protocol is an international treaty which extends the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) that commits State Parties to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, based on the premise that (a)

The agreement aims at keeping global temperature increases below 1.5 degrees Celsius — or around 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit — above pre-industry levels. Countries are expected to report emissions regularly, and developed countries would support developing countries in their efforts to produce energy with fewer emissions. The U.S. and 194 countries signed the agreement.

On December 12 of 2015, 195 countries made history by committing to the first truly global international climate change agreement (Paris Agreement, 2015). This agreement took place in Paris and was adopted under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The outcome of the Paris Conference on Climate Change was described as “revolutionary” (Venezuela) “marvelous act” (China) and as “a tremendous collective achievement” (European Union) that introduced a “new era of global climate governance” (Egypt) while “restoring the global community’s faith of accomplishing things multilaterally” (USA) (Paris Agreement, 2015).