UNITED NATIONS
NATIONS UNIES

INTERGOVERNMENTAL NEGOTIATING COMMITTEE
FOR A FRAMEWORK CONVENTION ON CLIMATE CHANGE (INC/FCCC)

COMITÉ INTERGOUVERNEMENTAL DE NÉGOCIATION
D'UNE CONVENTION-CADRE SUR LES CHANGEMENTS CLIMATIQUES (CIN/CCCC)

The Climate Change Treaty - One Year after Rio

Geneva, June 1993-- One year after the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change was unveiled at the 3-14 June 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, the treaty has been signed by 162 governments and ratified by 20.

This is almost halfway down the road to the 50 ratifications needed for the agreement to enter into force. At the present pace the treaty should take effect by mid 1994. This would be impressive as it usually takes much longer for treaties to become international law.

"The Convention required 14 months of complex negotiations. Its wide acceptance by governments is a real achievement and represents our best long-term hope for dealing effectively with the risk of man-made climate change," says Raúl Estrada Oyuela, Chairman of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee for a Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC) and Plenipotentiary Minister, Argentine Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Among the first ratifying countries were a number of major greenhouse gas emitters, including Australia, Canada, China, Mexico, and the United States of America. During the negotiations, the U.S.A. was alone among developed countries in objecting to a clear treaty commitment by such countries to cut back greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.

On 21 April of this year, President Bill Clinton changed the official U.S. position, declaring: "I reaffirm my personal, and announce our nation's, commitment to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions to their 1990 level by the year 2000. I am instructing my administration to produce a cost-effective plan by August that can continue the trend of reduced emissions."

This commitment will strengthen efforts to meet the treaty's ultimate objective, which (in the words of the Convention) is to "achieve stabilisation of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent anthropogenic [i.e., man-made] interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner."

Ten other ratifiers were island-states: three in the Indian Ocean (Mauritius, the Seychelles, and the Maldives), five in the Pacific (Vanuatu, the Cook Islands, Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and the Marshall Islands), and two in the Caribbean (Antigua and Barbuda, and St. Kitts and Nevis). This is hardly surprising, since low-lying islands and atolls are among the areas at greatest risk if global warming leads to rising seas.

The other ratifiers are Armenia, Ecuador, Guinea, Monaco, and Zimbabwe.

Still to come are the four Nordic and 12 European Community nations, which strongly backed the treaty and, as industrial countries, are significant producers of greenhouse gases.

Climate model forecasts suggest that the earth's average surface temperature will increase by 1.5 C to 4.5 C over the next 100 years. This could upset regional climate patterns, affecting water supplies, agriculture, patterns of drought and flood, and more. Global warming could also cause the sea to rise through thermal expansion of ocean water and through the melting of ice caps and mountain glaciers. Reducing the risk of such events will demand major efforts to improve energy efficiency in industry, transport, and homes.

Michael Zammit Cutajar, Executive Secretary of the treaty's interim secretariat in Geneva, emphasises that "the overall objective of the Convention is the protection of the climate system as a global ecological resource. But this must be done in ways that enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner. In plain language, the bottom line of the Convention is not climate change as a scientific issue, but what to do about it, when, and at what cost."

If the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, an international network of leading scientists, concluded that a 60% to 80% reduction in CO2 emissions would be necessary to stabilise atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, why does the treaty not go beyond stabilising developed country emissions in the year 2000 at 1990 levels?

"Rather than drafting a treaty that lays out highly specific policies that only a few countries could now agree to, negotiators sought a broad consensus. The result is a general treaty that sets an overall 'framework' within which all governments can work together", says Mr. Estrada. And, while the Convention does not include strict targets for future emission levels by developed countries, it does call for regular reviews of the sufficiency of the present commitments as scientific understanding improves.

In Mr. Estrada's opinion there are two major tasks for government representatives in the interim period that began with Rio and will continue until the first Conference of the Parties (i.e., the ratifying countries), which is likely to take place in 1995 in Germany.

"A key task for this interim period is to produce comparable methodologies for making national 'inventories' of greenhouse gas emissions by sources and removals by sinks. Scientists have made good progress on improving the methodologies for measuring emissions from various sources, although more work is needed. A bigger problem is figuring out how to measure the amount of carbon dioxide that is absorbed by 'sinks' such as forests and oceans.

"A second task is to obtain financial support for implementation of the Convention by developing countries. They will need new and additional resources to produce Convention-related data, to design and implement programmes, and to develop or obtain energy-efficient technologies. The scope for new projects to improve energy efficiency is immense."

Funding the involvement of developing countries now is critical because in the long-term they will become the major emitters of greenhouse gases. This was discussed further at the 26-28 May Beijing meeting of participants in the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

These and other issues will also be discussed at the INC/FCCC's eighth session in Geneva from 16 to 27 August. A successful conclusion to this meeting (and to the others during the interim period) is important.

Says Chairman Estrada, "If we can ensure that the Convention process gets off to a good start, we will be in a position to focus more on the substantial issues, which are complex and demanding. In particular, the Convention states that we should review the adequacy of the commitment of developed countries to bring their greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by the year 2000. On one hand, such reductions will not be easy since they affect so many economic activities and interests. On the other, scientists tell us they may not be enough to stabilise atmospheric concentrations.

"The underlying, long-term problem that the Convention must address is that most developing countries are trying to follow the patterns of production and consumption adopted by the industrialised countries. These patterns have proved to be the key cause of man-made climate change. We must find a new approach that will allow us to combat climate change while promoting the economic development necessary for meeting human needs."