Green Projects

The release of the first instalment of AR 5 came in the wake of an unusual number of severe weather-related disasters, and at the head of an almost unbroken series of the hottest years on record, with the period 2000 to 2009 the warmest decade on record so far.  

There are some basic well-established links:

• The concentration of greenhouse gases in the earth’s atmosphere is directly linked to the average global temperature on Earth; 
• The concentration has been rising steadily, and mean global temperatures along with it, since the time of the Industrial Revolution; and
• The most abundant greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is the product of burning fossil fuels. 

Greenhouse gases occur naturally and are essential to the survival of humans and millions of other living things, through keeping some of the sun’s warmth from reflecting back into space and making Earth livable. But it’s a matter of scale. A century and a half of industrialization, including clear-felling forests and certain farming methods, has driven up quantities of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. As populations, economies and standards of living grow, so does the cumulative level of GHG emissions.

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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 ended in 2012. The second commitment period began on 1 January 2013 and will end in 2020.

There are now 195 Parties to the Convention and 192 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol. The UNFCCC secretariat supports all institutions involved in the international climate change negotiations, particularly the Conference of the Parties (COP), the Conference of the Parties serving as the meeting of the Parties (CMP), the subsidiary bodies (which advise the COP/CMP), and the COP/CMP Bureau (which deals mainly with procedural and organizational issues arising from the COP/CMP and also has technical functions). For a brief depiction of how these various bodies are related to one another, please see Bodies.

The question of what happens beyond 2020 was answered by Parties in Durban in 2011. For more information on the Durban Platform for Enhanced Action, click here.

Climate change is a complex problem, which, although environmental in nature, has consequences for all spheres of existence on our planet. It either impacts on– or is impacted by– global issues, including poverty, economic development, population growth, sustainable development and resource management. It is not surprising, then, that solutions come from all disciplines and fields of research and development.

At the very heart of the response to climate change, however, lies the need to reduce emissions. In 2010, governments agreed that emissions need to be reduced so that global temperature increases are limited to below 2 degrees Celsius.

According to the Fourth Assessment Report of the International Panel for Climate Change (IPCC AR4), global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 per cent between 1970 and 2004. With current climate change mitigation policies and related sustainable development practices, these emissions will continue to grow over the next few decades. Continue

Mitigation policies and measures used by developed country Parties mostly focussed on the large emitting sectors, such as energy and transport. Strengthening of climate change policy portfolios resulted in policies and measures in some key areas being substantially strengthened, through more stringent requirements, wider coverage and increased investment. Regulatory and fiscal instruments were complimented by market based instruments such as GHG emission trading schemes. Developed countries periodically present their mitigation actions in their National Communications, which are summarised in the compilation and synthesis reports. More recently, developed countries have agreed to implement under the Convention quantified economy-wide emission targets for 2020.

The Kyoto Protocol “operationalizes” the Convention by committing industrialized countries to limit greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, emission limitation or reduction targets add up to, at minimum, five per cent emissions reduction compared to 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008 to 2012. Negotiations are currently on-going to decide on a second commitment period of the Protocol.

Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions: developing country Parties have been contributing to global mitigation efforts in several ways. The clean development mechanism (CDM) has been an important avenue of action for these countries to implement project activities that reduce emissions and enhance sinks. More recently, developing countries have agreed to implementNationally Appropriate Mitigation actions, or NAMAs, with support from developed countries.

Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation: The IPCC (2007) estimated emissions from deforestation in the 1990s to be at 5.8 GtCO2/year. Parties to the UNFCCC process recognized the contribution of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation in developing countries to climate change and the need to take action to reduce such emissions. Developing countries are encouraged to contribute to mitigation actions in the forest sector by undertaking activities relating to reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, conservation of forest carbon stocks, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD-plus). In the REDD Web platform relevant organizations and stakeholders are encouraged to submit information relating to REDD-plus.

Emissions from international aviation and maritime transport contribute increasingly to global GHG emissions. To addressthese emissions cooperation among the UNFCCC and the International Civil Aviation Organization and the International Maritime Organization is important.