United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Kyoto protocol
Word List
| The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC) | Рамочная конвенция ООН об изменении климата (РКИК ООН) |
| United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) | Конференция Организации Объединенных Наций по окружающей среде и развитию (ЮНСЕД или Встреча на высшем уровне «Планета Земля») |
| the Earth Summit | Встреча на высшем уровне «Планета Земля» |
| anthropogenic interference | антропогенное вмешательство |
| Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee | Межправительственный комитет по ведению переговоров |
| national greenhouse gas inventories | национальные кадастры парниковых газов |
| Conferences of the Parties (COP) | Конференции Сторон (КС) |
| greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions | выбросы парниковых газов (ПГ) |
| Marrakesh Accords | Марракешские соглашения |
| еmissions trading (cap-and-trade) | торговля квотами на выброс парниковых газов |
| the carbon market | углеродный рынок |
| Clean development mechanism (CDM) | Механизм чистого развития (МЧР) |
| Joint implementation (JI) | Совместное осуществление (СО) |
| international transaction log | международная регистрация операций и сделок |
| compliance system | система надзора за соблюдением (правил, договоренностей) |
| Annex I countries | Страны, включенные в приложение I (к Рамочной Конвенции ООН по изменению климата) |
| carbon capture and storage (CCS) | улавливания и хранения углерода (CCS) |
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC) is an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro from 3 to 14 June 1992. The objective of the treaty is to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
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The treaty itself sets no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual countries and contains no enforcement mechanisms. In that sense, the treaty is considered legally non-binding. Instead, the treaty provides for updates (called "protocols") that would set mandatory emission limits. The principal update is the Kyoto Protocol, which has become much better known than the UNFCCC itself.
The UNFCCC was opened for signature on May 9, 1992, after an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee produced the text of the Framework Convention as a report following its meeting in New York from 30 April to 9 May 1992. It entered into force on March 21, 1994. As of December 2009, UNFCCC had 192 parties.
One of its first tasks was to establish national greenhouse gas inventories of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals, which were used to create the 1990 benchmark levels for accession of Annex I countries to the Kyoto Protocol and for the commitment of those countries to GHG reductions. Updated inventories must be regularly submitted by Annex I countries.
The parties to the convention have met annually from 1995 in Conferences of the Parties (COP) to assess progress in dealing with climate change. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was concluded and established legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. 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 (GHG) emissions .These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.
The major distinction between the Protocol and the Convention is that while the Convention encouraged industrialised countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to do so. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere as a result of more than 150 years of industrial activity, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of “common but differentiated responsibilities.”
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184 Parties of the Convention have ratified its Protocol to date. The detailed rules for the implementation of the Protocol were adopted in Marrakesh in 2001, and are called the “Marrakesh Accords.”
Marrakesh Accords
Under the Treaty, countries must meet their targets primarily through national measures. However, the Kyoto Protocol offers them an additional means of meeting their targets by way of three market-based mechanisms.
The Kyoto mechanisms are:
· Emissions trading – known as “the carbon market"
· Clean development mechanism (CDM)
· Joint implementation (JI).
The mechanisms help stimulate green investment and help Parties meet their emission targets in a cost-effective way.
Monitoring emission targets
Under the Protocol, countries’ actual emissions have to be monitored and precise records have to be kept of the trades carried out.
Registry systems track and record transactions by Parties under the mechanisms. The UN Climate Change Secretariat, based in Bonn, Germany, keeps an international transaction log to verify that transactions are consistent with the rules of the Protocol.
Reporting is done by Parties by way of submitting annual emission inventories and national reports under the Protocol at regular intervals.
A compliance system ensures that Parties are meeting their commitments and helps them to meet their commitments if they have problems doing so.
The Kyoto Protocol, like the Convention, is also designed to assist countries in adapting to the adverse effects of climate change. It facilitates the development and deployment of techniques that can help increase resilience to the impacts of climate change.
The Adaptation Fund was established to finance adaptation projects and programmes in developing countries that are Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The Fund is financed mainly with a share of proceeds from CDM project activities.
The Kyoto Protocol is generally seen as an important first step towards a truly global emission reduction regime that will stabilize GHG emissions, and provides the essential architecture for any future international agreement on climate change.
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By the end of the first commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012, a new international framework needs to have been negotiated and ratified that can deliver the stringent emission reductions the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has clearly indicated are needed.
Copenhagen С limate Т alks
COP15 was the fifteenth 'Conference of the Parties' (thus, COP) under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The conference began on December 7 and ran through to December 18, 2009 in Copenhagen, Denmark. The COP is the highest body of the UNFCCC and consists of environment ministers who meet once a year to discuss the convention’s developments. It was attended by 192 nations with 115 heads of government in attendance.
Ahead of the COP15 conference, the official Denmark website stated that the "the goals of the climate change convention are to stabilize the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere at a level that prevents dangerous man-made climate changes. This stabilization must occur in such a way as to give the ecosystems the opportunity to adapt naturally. This means that food safety must not be compromised, and that the potential to create sustainable social and economic development must not be endangered." It was widely agreed that there was little prospect of reaching final agreement on a post-Kyoto agreement at the COP15 meeting. Central to the prospects of reaching an agreement at COP15 was whether the developed Annex I countries, which have emitted the bulk of the human-induced carbon dioxide currently in the atmosphere, agree to deep binding cuts in greenhouse gas emissions.
However, the conference failed to agree on a binding legal replacement to the Kyoto Protocol, with differences on key issues such as the magnitude of emissions reduction targets for developed countries, the nature of commitments from major developing countries, financing adaptation and technology transfer.
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