244 A strategyfor action to slowand stabiliseclimate change
a time-frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate
change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable
economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. In setting this
objective, the Convention has recognised that it is only by stabilising the
concentration of greenhouse gases (especially carbon dioxide) in the
atmosphere that the rapid climate change which is expected to occur
with global warming can be halted.
Up to the end of 2003, nine sessions of the Conference of the Par-
ties to the Climate Convention have taken place. Those since November
1997 have largely been concerned with the Kyoto Protocol, the first
formal binding legislation promulgated under the Convention. The fol-
lowing paragraphs will first outline the actions taken so far, then de-
scribe the Kyoto Protocol and address the further actions necessary
to satisfy the Convention’s objective to stabilise greenhouse gas con-
centrations. Scientific and technical details of the options available
to achieve the reductions in emissions required will be described in
Chapter 11.Stabilisation of emissions
The target for short-term action proposed for developed countries by
the Climate Convention was that, by the year 2000, greenhouse gas
emissions should be brought back to no more than their 1990 levels.
In the run-up to the Rio conference, before the Climate Convention
was formulated, many developed countries had already announced their
intention to meet such a target at least for carbon dioxide. They would do
this mainly through energy-saving measures, through switching to fuels
such as natural gas, which for the same energy production generates
forty per cent less carbon dioxide than coal and twenty-five per cent less
than oil. In addition those countries with traditional heavy industries
(e.g. the iron and steel industry) were experiencing large changes which
significantly reduce fossil fuel use. More detail of these energy-saving
measures are given in the next chapter, which is devoted to a discussion
of future energy needs and production.
By the year 2000, compared with 1990, global emissions from fossil
fuel burning had risen by ten per cent. There was great variation between
the emissions from different countries. In the USA they rose by seventeen
per cent, in the rest of the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation
and Development) they rose on average by five per cent. Emissions in
countries in the former Soviet Union (FSU – also often called Economies
in Transition) fell by around forty per cent because of the collapse of
their economies, while the total of emissions from developing countries