TORTUOUS ROUTE TO COPENHAGEN

Financial Times

1988 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change set up for the world’s leading climate scientists to report on global warming.


1992 Earth Summit in Rio, at which nations including the US sign up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, requiring them to take action to combat climate change.


1997 After tortuous negotiations, the Kyoto protocol to the UNFCCC is agreed, setting out the commitments to emissions cuts required to fulfil the parent treaty. Developed countries must cut their emissions by an average of
5 per cent compared with 1990 levels by 2012. The US signs the protocol but fails to ratify it.


2001 President George W. Bush explicitly rejects the Kyoto protocol and casts doubt on the scientific basis of climate change.


2005 The Kyoto treaty comes into force after Russia ratifies it. The UK’s Tony Blair makes climate change a priority for the summit he hosts of the Group of Eight industrialised nations.


2007 The US agrees at the G8 summit to start negotiations with the UN for a framework to replace the Kyoto protocol after 2012. At a UN meeting in Bali, Indonesia, governments set out the “Bali roadmap” for two years of talks on a new agreement.


2008 The European Union passes a package of measures to cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, compared with 1990 levels, and offers to raise the reductions to 30 per cent if other countries also agree to cuts. The UN meets at Poznan, Poland, to set out the timetable for a year of final negotiations on a successor to Kyoto.


2009 Representatives from 190 countries will meet in Bonn, headquarters of the UNFCCC, in April and June to hammer out the details of a deal, including publishing a draft text. In September, world leaders are due to meet at the UN General Assembly in New York to discuss the plans. December brings a UN conference in Copenhagen where a final agreement is intended to be forged on a Kyoto replacement.


2010-12 If an agreement is reached, countries submit it to their domestic legislatures for approval.


2012 Current provisions of the Kyoto protocol expire.