As climate knows no borders, it is important that the whole world cooperates if the battle against climate change is ever going to be won. Climate change has been labelled to be more dangerous to human beings that terrorism or war. Over decades international collaboration and cooperation has developed and evolved.

In 1979 the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) organised the first World Climate Conference, which concluded that there was ‘discernible human influence on the global climate. In 1988 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution for the ‘protection of the global climate for present and future generations of mankind’. The WMO and the United Nations Environment Programme created the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) during the same year.

The IPCC
The IPCC was established to assess scientific information on climate change and formulate appropriate response strategies. The panel consists of three working groups, namely Working Group I, The Scientific Basis; Working Group II, Impacts, Vulnerability and Adaptation; and Working Group III, Mitigation. It has so far prepared four assessment reports, which confirm the human interference with the climate system. The Panel has also prepared a number of special reports such as Safe Guarding the Ozone Layer and the Climate System, Emission Scenarios and Carbon Capture and Storage.

Following the first report of the IPCC in 1990, which confirmed the reality of climate change, a United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was adopted at the Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

The UNFCCC
The UNFCCC was adopted in 1992 with the ultimate objective of the “stabilization of GHG concentration in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent anthropogenic interference with the climate system. Such a level should be achieved within a timeframe sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.” As of January 2009, the convention has 192 parties.

At its first Conference of the Parties (CoP), it became apparent that the convention did not have legally binding commitments and an open ended ad hoc working group was set to begin a process towards appropriate action for the period beyond 2000. This led to the Kyoto Protocol adopted in 1997. For the protocol to come into force there was a need for a minimum of 55 parties to ratify the protocol, and that the parties to the protocol should account for at least 55% of the global emission. This condition was met after the Russia ratified the protocol in November 2004; hence the protocol came into force three months later in February 16, 2005.