UNFCCC
In 1992, countries joined an international treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to cooperatively consider what they could do to limit average global temperature increases and the resulting climate change, and to cope with whatever impacts were, by then, inevitable.
By 1995, countries realized that emission reductions provisions in the Convention were inadequate. They launched negotiations to strengthen the global response to climate change, and, two years later, adopted the Kyoto Protocol. The Kyoto Protocol legally binds developed countries to emission reduction targets. The Protocol’s first commitment period started in 2008 and ends in 2012. At COP17 in Durban, governments of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol decided that a second commitment period, from 2013 onwards, would seamlessly follow the end of the first commitment period. The length of the second commitment period is to be determined: it will be either five or eight years long.
There are now 195 Parties to the Convention. The UNFCCC secretariat supports all institutions involved in the international climate change negotiations, particularly the Conference of the Parties (COP), the subsidiary bodies (which advise the COP), and the COP Bureau (which deals mainly with procedural and organizational issues arising from the COP and also has technical functions).
The Latest UNFCCC News
Operationalizing a Gender-sensitive Approach in the Green Climate Fund
NEW YORK (March 12, 2013)– The board of the Green Climate Fund (GCF) meets this week, March 13-15, 2013, to discuss key issues pertinent for the operationalization of the GCF. One of the main agenda items for this session is the business model framework, which includes discussions on the structure and organization of the fund, the private sector facility related matters, access modalities and the results management framework. Also important will be the discussion of …
Email This Article
New Directions in Environmental Law Conference
[ March 2, 2013; ]
NEW YORK (February 3, 2013)– WEDO is excited to be participating in the 2013 New Directions in Environmental Law Conference on March 2, 2013 at Yale Law School in New Haven, Connecticut. This year’s conference, entitled The Power of Voice, will be the third in Yale Law’s New Directions in Environmental Law series and will build on momentum created over the past two years. The 2011 foundational conference, A Climate of Possibility, featured …
The Doha Gaps: Seeking Miracles, Solidarity and Good Old Fashioned Hope to Fill Them
New York, New York (December 14, 2012)– On the heels of Hurricane Sandy, which tore a destructive path through the Caribbean and up the East coast of the U.S., and during Typhoon Bopha, the worst, most devastating storm to occur in the Philippines in half a century, the eighteenth Conference of Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC COP18) in Doha, Qatar, failed to reflect reality.
COP18 ended Saturday night, December …
NEW: Report on Women’s Participation in the UNFCCC
New York, New York (December 14, 2012)– Especially in light of COP18 agreeing a new decision on promoting women’s participation in the UNFCCC, WEDO is proud to release its latest report highlighting statistics on women’s participation in the climate change process. This new reports looks in depth at women’s participation in the UNFCCC over the last 5 years, graphically portraying data on the overall percentage of women on national delegations, as Heads of Delegations and on …
Grains of Sand Can Move the World – Reflections on COP18
by Bridget Burns, WEDO Project and Communications Coordinator. At COP18, in addition to facilitating the WDF program and WEDO communications, Bridget worked in collaboration with several individuals to establish an active youth gender working group.
The culmination of any two-week-long multilateral negotiations, particularly around a complex, urgent and global issue such as climate change, is always followed by a period of reaction and reflection. Stakeholders at every level, across sectors and issues embedded in the …
