Climate change
Climate change is a subject which has in recent years received increasing attention at international level. At the UN Conference on Environment and Development held in Rio in 1992, an agreement was reached about the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. An objective of this convention is to stabilise climate change at a level sustainable for humans and the environment.
At the 3rd Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change, the parties reached agreement on the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol laid down quantitative reduction targets for the Annex I countries under which the group as a whole must, by the end of the first commitment period ending in 2012, reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 5% compared with the reference year 1990.
A unique feature of the Framework Convention and the Kyoto Protocol is that the international framework anticipated national policy. In the middle of the 1990s, climate policy was not yet a fully-fledged policy area, a situation which changed only after international targets had been set.
At international level, the first hesitant steps towards preparing a climate regime for the period after 2012 were made at the 11th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Climate Change held in November 2005.
Another crucial year for climate policy was 2007. The climate became an even more prominent issue on the international agenda, in particular under the impetus of the findings of the UN IPCC climate panel, which stressed that a dramatic climate crisis loomed ahead if there was no drastic change in policy, and this was further stressed in the media with Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth”. European policy makers moved to respond to these growing climate change challenges. In March 2007, the European Union adopted its 20/20/20 targets. By striving for energy efficiency (20% efficiency increase) and renewable energy (20% of the energy mix), the European Union would by 2020 reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 20%; in the event of a comprehensive global agreement, this target would automatically be raised to –30% compared with 1990 levels. Thus the EU was ready to take the lead internationally in the debate about a future climate regime. At the European Council of December 2008, political agreement was reached about this EU energy and climate package and the concomitant legislative instruments.
At the Climate Change Conference held in Bali in December 2007, the international community also took up the gauntlet. The climate conference resulted in a Bali Road Map (a negotiating agenda) and a Bali Plan of Action. Through four building blocks, the Bali Plan of Action draws the substantive outlines for a future climate policy: (1) a ‘shared vision’ must lead to the establishment of the objectives and principles; (2) the building block ‘mitigation’ focuses on reducing emissions by countries and sectors (including forestry, aviation and shipping); (3) the building block ‘adaptation’ must equip countries to deal with the consequences of climate change; and (4) the building blocks ‘technology’ and ‘financing’ make provisions for the resources to accomplish this reversal.
The Bali Conference is striving to round off negotiations about a future climate regime no later than by December 2009 at the Climate Conference in Copenhagen. In the course of 2008, four parallel negotiating sessions were held. At the conference of Poznan in December 2008, it was decided to round off the discussion phase shortly and embark upon genuine negotiations as from the beginning of 2009.
