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, in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty set the goal of reducing emissions of greenhouse gas in order to combat global warming.

The original framework of the treaty did not set mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations and contained no enforcement provisions; it is therefore considered legally non-binding. Rather, the UNFCCC stated that mandatory emission limits would be established by further “protocols” that would serve as updates of the con-vention. The principal update is the Kyoto Protocol which, since its enforcement in 1997, has become more frequently referred to ...