Toronto Conference

SCIENTISTS FROM VARIOUS international organizations, such as the World Meteorological Organization in Geneva, met with their peers in groups at various locations for three years. Following the signing of the United Nations Vienna Convention on the Protection of the Ozone Layer (1985) and the Villach Conference (1985), these meetings helped to develop the basis for further action. From the discussions at these meetings, a scientific accord on the main aspects of how much climate warming can be expected emerged. The confluence of this emerging consensus and other events led to the Toronto Conference in 1988.

The scientists' efforts gained the support of the United Nations, the World Meteorological Organization, the Canadian government, and other international organizations. The scientists then came together in Toronto, Canada, from June 27 to 30, 1988. In attracting national policymakers as well as 300 scientists from 46 countries and organizations, this conference became the first such international conference to combine science and policy.

Entitled the International Conference of the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security, the meeting highlighted atmospheric issues in a comprehensive way. The concern for the potential damage to the planet was compared with the consequences of nuclear war, and the scientific consensus at the conference astonished its chair, Stephen Lewis, who was then Canada's ambassador to the United Nations. Lewis also brokered the strongly worded final declaration. Identifying the existing situation as “an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment,” the Conference Statement claimed that the consequences of this experiment would be second only those of a global nuclear war.

Recognizing that attempts to address issues affecting the atmosphere as a whole had been fragmentary to date, the Toronto Conference took a more global approach. The initiative was to integrate the existing Vienna Convention (1985) and the 1979 Geneva Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution and to provide a basis for including issues that had not yet been addressed or recognized. Such an integrated approach to considering the atmosphere as a whole would conceivably permit a more complex approach to interrelated issues and solutions. As such, this initiative raised the possibility of a comprehensive Law of the Air.