International Negotiations

Climate change is a global challenge and requires a global solution. Greenhouse gas emissions have the same impact on the atmosphere whether they originate in Washington, London or Beijing. Consequently, action by one country to reduce emissions will do little to slow global warming unless other countries act as well. Ultimately, an effective strategy will require commitments and action by all the major emitting countries.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change
The international response to climate change was launched in 1992, at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, with the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The Convention established a long-term objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". It also set a voluntary goal of reducing emissions from developed countries to 1990 levels by 2000 - a goal that most countries did not meet. Currently 191 parties, including the US, has ratified the UNFCCC.

UNFCCC First Ten Years: A Report of the UN Secretariat

Kyoto Protocol
Recognizing that stronger action was needed, countries negotiated the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which sets binding targets to reduce emissions 5.2 percent below 1990 levels by 2012. The Protocol entered into force on February 16, 2005, which made the Protocol's emissions targets binding legal commitments for those industrialized countries that ratified it (the United States has not ratified it). In addition, the market-based mechanisms established under the Protocol, including international emissions trading and the Clean Development Mechanism, became fully operational with the Protocol's entry into force.

Conference of the Parties (COPs)
Cop 13 - Bali, Indonesia
In tense and chaotic talks that ran a full day longer than planned, delegates to the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali remained far apart on fundamental issues but in the end agreed to launch a loosely framed negotiating process with the ambitious goal of achieving a new global climate agreement in 2009. 

Previous COPs
Pew Center Summaries
  

G8
Pew Center Statement on G8 Summit 2008 in Japan

G8 Summit Leaders Declaration, July 8, 2008
Environment and Climate Change (Sections 22-39)

Pew Center Statement on G8 Summit 2007 in Heiligendamm, Germany

Growth and Responsibility in the World Economy: Summit Declaration June 7, 2007

G8 Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development
 

Major Economies Meetings on Energy Security and Climate Change
Remarks by Eileen Claussen at the Major Economies Meeting in Washington, DC, on September 19, 2007