By "first climate change regime" I mean the Kyoto Procotol and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change negotiation process.
I'm working on a paper about the International Legal Climate Change regime and would like to get some ideas around this question; any contribution or help will be greatly appreciated. (authors, expert reports, papers, studies, books...)
Thank you very much
UNFCCC, alongside the two other major conventions adopted in Rio summit, more or less failed to deliver the core of what they promised. Nonetheless, they were able to pave the way for major developments. Nature published a study in 2012, at the time of RIO+20, and presented a scorecard for all the three conventions. Part of what went wrong with Kyoto protocol can be found there.
Kyoto protocol was the first major attempt in realizing UNFCCC.
Main promise: 20% reduction by 2012 (base year: 1990)
Kyoto failed coz’ it only focused on Annexed 1 countries, developed countries (and at the time China’s clout, and other emerging economies, was not well understood). US administration understood that if China didn’t move and US did, it would give the Chinese an edge in international trade. So, it was a gridlock for first movers. Everybody was waiting for others to make the first move.
Canada and Australia didn’t implement and US initially didn’t even sign the treaty. President Clinton signed it eventually in 1997 but didn’t send it to the senate where it would be, unarguably, crashed. The role of fossil fuel lobbies couldn’t be taken lightly in the way the whole situation panned out. Also, the role of financing was also an unresolved issue, as mentioned.
Indeed.
I think the Keeling curve is a good indication of the overall changes. Other GHGs (also considering their radiative forcing and residence time), Global temperature rise (influencing agriculture and food security in tropical and subtropical areas in particular), sea level rise, ocean temperature (which is still to be expected due to delayed warming, perhaps 1 degrees C), ice sheets melting (e.g. Hansen, et al. (2012) "paleoclimate implications for human-made climate change"'s graphs on ice masses in Greenland and Antarctic.), deforestation, etc. that influence each other and ultimately the climate. Also recommend Stern review.
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