Lawyer Say

International Greenhouse gas law is a relatively young concept. Although having been in existence for over a decade now, the first step towards the creation of a global system of regulation for climate change and the emission of greenhouse gases was the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). This agreement was signed by a majority of the members of the United Nations although it only committed its members in the sense of an aspiration rather than binding obligations.

The first ever international agreement with legally binding targets for nations relating to the emission of greenhouse gases was the Kyoto Protocol of 1997. This agreement set binding targets for 37 industrialised nations to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The agreement put in place greenhouse gas emissions targets for the period 2008 to 2012. The agreement was later followed by the rules for the implementation of the Protocol which were adopted at Conference Of Parties 7 in Marrakesh in 2001, and are called the “Marrakesh Accords.”

The next pivotal step in relation to the protection of the environment was to get the largest greenhouse gas polluters of the present and the foreseeable future, being the United States, China and India, to agree on binding targets for greenhouse gas emissions. It was essential that this happen at the recent conference in Copenhagen and it unfortunately did not result in a set of targets which can be used to avoid catastrophic climate change in the next few decades due to the green house gas effect. There are a number of possible reasons for the failure of the talks to reach these binding targets and some have pointed out that it has resulted in the assumption of some targets which are were difficult to obtain but still do not achieve the necessary reductions in order to prevent a global environmental disaster.