United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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 June 3 to 14, 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.[1]
The treaty itself set 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 April 30 to May 9, 1992
. It entered into force on March 21, 1994. As of May 2011, UNFCCC has 194 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 UNFCCC is also the name of the United Nations Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the
Convention, with offices in Haus Carstanjen, Bonn, Germany. From 2006 to 2010 the head of the secretariat was
Yvo de Boer; on May 17, 2010 his successor, Christiana Figueres from Costa Rica has been named.
The Secretariat, augmented through the parallel efforts of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC),
aims to gain consensus through meetings and the discussion of various strategies.
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.[2]
