Welcome back, readers! Today, we shall look at the first international law for climate change. The international law for climate change that we are looking at is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) convened back in 1992 when it was first introduced in the Rio Earth Summit. Today, we have a “five-sigma” level of confidence that climate is real, where there is only a 1 in a million chance that it is a not apparent. Yet, there are still numerous climate change deniers out there today (Doyle, 2019). With fewer and more uncertain scientific evidence compared to today (UNFCCC, 1992), imagine the difficulty convincing 197 countries to work together to tackle this problem despite these challenges. Thus, it was considered to be a hallmark international agreement and we feel that the UNFCCC is an international law that deserves to be praised and hopefully emulated.
What is Climate Change under the UNFCCC?
The objective of the UNFCCC (Article 2) is to stabilise GHG concentrations to prevent negative man-made interference with the Earth’s “climate system”. Do keep Article 2 in mind as we will refer to this same objective when talking about the Kyoto Protocol and Paris Agreement!
“Climate system” means the totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions.
This is the interconnectedness we described in our post on land pollution. This recognition of the more-than-atmospheric impacts of climate change is praise-worthy.
The UNFCCC defines “climate change” rather explicitly
“change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activities that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.” (UNFCCC, 1992)
Again, the definition echoes what we have mentioned previously. Climate change and the greenhouse effect are natural. The problem, however, is the accelerated rate at which they occur due to increased anthropogenic activities. The emphasis on direct and indirect human activities also accounts for the various sources of greenhouse gas we discussed prior.
Lastly another definition we would like to highlight is that of greenhouse gases.
“Greenhouse gases” means those gaseous constituents of the atmosphere, both natural and anthropogenic, that absorb and re-emit infrared radiation (UNFCCC, 1992).
Again, we see an emphasis on the differentiation between greenhouse gases of natural and anthropogenic origin, which is found in “climate change” as well. In addition, greenhouse gases are defined based on the scientific principle in which it causes the greenhouse effect. We find the use of science as a basis for definition refreshing, especially after the various definitions we have seen thus far.
Conclusion
All in all, we think that the UNFCCC, as arguably the first piece of international laws that attempt to control climate change has been drafted rather well. In particular, we really appreciate the science-based definitions used in the UNFCCC and the way accounting is done. This precedes the concept of the Pollution Transfer Continuum, as the term is only coined in 2005 by Haygarth, Condron, Heathwaite, Turner, and Harris (2005). In our upcoming posts, we shall look at some daughter laws that came into force as a result of the UNFCCC, namely the Kyoto Protocol and the Paris Agreement.
See you there!
Lee Yang
References
Doyle, A. (2019, 26 February 2019). Evidence for man-made global warming hits ‘gold standard’: scientists. Reuters. Retrieved from https://www.reuters.com/article/us-climatechange-temperatures-idUSKCN1QE1ZU
Haygarth, P. M., Condron, L. M., Heathwaite, A. L., Turner, B. L., & Harris, G. (2005). The phosphorus transfer continuum: linking source to impact with an interdisciplinary and multi-scaled approach. Science of the total environment, 344(1-3), 5-14.
UNFCCC. (1992, 2020). What is the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change? Retrieved from https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-convention/what-is-the-united-nations-framework-convention-on-climate-change