365 Days of Climate Awareness 80 - The UN Foundational Conference on Climate Change

The UN Foundational Conference on Climate Change, or UNFCCC, was negotiated in 1992 and went into force on March 21, 1994. It declares the rationale behind climate change mitigation policies, and sets up general policy guidelines for nation parties with respect to greenhouse gas emissions tracking and reduction.

The UNFCCC, as the title states, is foundational in nature. It set up the UN administration for future, more specific treaties, such as the 1998 Kyoto Protocol and the 2015 Paris Agreement. For this reason it does not name specific emissions or climate targets, but focuses on scientific research and sharing of technical and financial resources between countries.

The preamble states why the treaty exists, and the philosophy behind its structure. "Concerned that human activities have been substantially increasing the atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, that these increases enhance the natural greenhouse effect, and that this will result on average in an additional warming of the Earth’s surface and atmosphere and may adversely affect natural ecosystems and humankind...", and "[a]cknowledging that the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities and their social and economic conditions..." These sentences were written in 1992. In the United States, our collective appreciation of the issue has regressed.

The international treaties with the sharpest teeth have generally concerned nuclear weapons, including inspection regimes of various intrusiveness and mechanisms for sanctions. Human rights treaties have likewise included punitive mechanisms. The JCPOA, the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, included several such. However, climate treaties have been almost entirely aspirational in nature.

It is under the UNFCC that the 26th annual conference among nation parties will be taking place in Glasgow, Scotland, beginning on October 31 of this year. Russia, China and Brazil are not expected to attend. China is the world's leading greenhouse gas emitter. Russia is the world's second leading producer of oil (behind the United States, which has risen to the lead spot thanks to huge investments in unconventional oil production, such as fracking), and Brazil is the eighth.The UK's churlish Boris Johnson has already said the conference could be a failure. The rising nationalism of the past two decades has almost completely undercut the collaborative intent of treaties such as the UNFCCC.

Tomorrow: the Kyoto Protocol.

Be brave, and be well.

UFCCC Informational Page