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Climate Policy

Climate policy refers to government or private actions designed to lower anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions or adapt to climate change. Emissions are rising worldwide and could result in substantial warming, sea-level rise, changes in precipitation patterns, and climate instability if the present trends continue. While knowledge of the greenhouse effect from increasing atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) due to fossil fuel combustion dates back to an 1896 paper by the Swedish physical chemist Svante Arrhenius, interest in climate policy began only in the early 1980s. At that time, the international climate community was preoccupied with the newly discovered hole in the stratospheric ozone layer. An international convention, or treaty, designed to protect it was approved in Vienna in 1985, and specific protocols were agreed to in Montreal in 1987. These treaties have proven to be effective mechanisms for international cooperation in research, monitoring, and action. The 1987 Montreal Protocol began the process of phasing out chlorofluorocarbons, a class of chemicals that are the main ozone-depleting substances. International treaties on the more complicated issue of climate change were approved in 1992 and 1997, but they have had limited impact and compliance thus far.

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the initiator of the 1985 Vienna Convention for the Protection of Stratospheric Ozone, also called for a convention on climate change. UNEP saw this as a mechanism to gain international agreement to reduce CO2 and other trace gas emissions, based on the Vienna experience. Increasingly sophisticated climate modeling projected a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels above preindustrial levels by 2030. UNEP's efforts triggered the creation of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in 1988 under the auspices of the World Meteorological Organization and UNEP. The IPCC is an international body that works with thousands of scientists around the world to study the greenhouse phenomenon and its regional effects and to suggest mitigation strategies. This organization went on to jointly share the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former U.S. Vice President Al Gore for its cumulative work in climate change science and policy.

Framework Convention of 1992

The IPCC issued its first scientific assessment of climate change in 1990. Underscoring the potential serious consequences of climate change on the global environment and people, it presented its report to the Second World Climate Conference in Geneva in October 1990. The United Nations General Assembly subsequently created an Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee charged with developing a climate convention. The climate treaty was finished at the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio de Janeiro.

The main objective of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992) was to achieve “stabilization of GHG concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system” (p. 4). Short-term goals included establishment of national GHG inventories and returning GHG emissions (other than those covered by the Montreal Protocol) to 1990 levels by the end of the 20th century. A sticking point between then U.S. President George H. W. Bush and European leaders was targets and timetables. Consequently, emissions reduction was made voluntary. However, this goal did not cover developing nations such as China, India, and Brazil, and thus, it is called the common but differentiated responsibility principle. This issue became a more vexing problem 5 years later in Kyoto, Japan. Nonetheless, as a first step, the climate convention was eventually ratified by 192 nations, though compliance was essentially ignored as attention turned to the Kyoto Protocol.

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