Global environmental politicsof follow-up intergovernmental conferences and encouraged some countries,
including all European Community and European Free Trade Association
members, to make unilateral commitments to stabilise carbon emissions. A
key rolewasplayed by the IPCC, formed by UNEP and the World Meteorolog-
ical Organisation in 1988; its first report confirmed the scientific consensus
that human activities were contributing to climate change, and called for
immediate policy action to reduce carbon emissions (Houghton et al. 1990 ).
The combination of growing scientific consensus, intergovernmental con-
ferences and unilateral commitments generated a political momentum that
resulted in the international convention on climate change agreed at the
1992 Rio Earth Summit.
The Framework Convention was initially signed by 155 countries and the
EU, and entered into force in March 1994. It identified a set of principles –
precaution, equity, co-operation and sustainability – and a wide range of
measures to enable the international community to stabilise greenhouse
gas concentrations at levels that should mitigate climate change. However,
no firm targets or deadlines were agreed; developed countries were simply
given the ‘voluntary goal’ of returning greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 lev-
els (Elliott 2004 : 85). The principle of ‘common but differentiated responsibil-
ities’ was written into the convention, so developed countries were expected
to take the leadincombating climate change and to transfer financial and
technological resources to developing countries to help them address the
problem, but no one was committed to anything specific, apart from estab-
lishing a fund under the auspices of the newly formed Global Environment
Facility (see Box9.3).
Nevertheless, an elaborate institutional framework was established to con-
tinue negotiations aimed at strengthening what everyone acknowledged was
just the first step towards an effective climate change regime. The first Con-
ference of the Parties to the Framework Convention (COP-1) in Berlin in 1995
wasunable to agree any new commitments, although the ‘Berlin mandate’
recognised the need to work towards a protocol that set targets and strength-
ened commitments to reduce greenhouse emissions. Eventually, the Kyoto
Protocol, hammered out over ten days of intense negotiations in Decem-
ber 1997 (COP-3), agreed legally binding targets for developed countries (so-
called Annex 1 countries) intended to achieve an overall reduction in GHG
emissions of 5.2 per cent of 1990 levels in the period 2008 to 2012 (see
Box9.4).
Each stage of the regime strengthening process, in Rio, Berlin and Kyoto,
wasgreeted with both acclamation and criticism. Praise for the environ-
mental diplomacy that brokered each agreement in the face of apparently
irresolvable political conflicts was matched by criticism about the weak-
ness of the commitments and sanctions in the treaty. These contrasting
responses reflected the compromises that had to be made if agreement was
tobe reached between sharply opposing negotiating positions. However, sub-
sequent efforts to firm up the details agreed at Kyoto floundered at The