Outsourcing Emissions: Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) as Ecological Modernisation - Implementing Environmental and Resource Management - page 266

climate (emphasis added). The US National Academy of Sciences' (NAS) Ad Hoc
Study Group on Carbon Dioxide and Climate Report in the same year and NAS'
assessment report called Changing Climate in 1983 also had major international
impacts on policy initiatives. Consequently, the Conference on the Assessment of
the Role of Carbon Dioxide and of Other Green House Gases in Climate Varia-
tion and Associated Impacts was held in 1985 in Villach (Austria). Sponsored by
United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), WMO and the International
Council of Scientific Unions (ICSU), the conference brought together 89 scientists
from 23 countries across the world to form an international panel interfacing sci-
ence and policy. To pursue the recommendations of the Villach conference, follow
up studies and conferences were held. The Toronto conference in 1988 called the
World Conference on the Changing Atmosphere: Implications for the Global Se-
curity marked the beginning of high level political debate on the risks of anthro-
pogenic climate change (van der Sluijs et al. 1998). It recommended 20% reduc-
tion in the worldwide CO 2 emissions by 2005 (from a 1988 benchmark).
Simultaneously, independent of the Toronto Conference, the WMO established
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with the support of the
UNEP in 1988 to assess the scientific, technical and socio-economic aspects of an-
thropogenic climate change. In 1990, the scientific Working Group of IPCC
brought out a comprehensive report that was accepted by the second World Cli-
mate Conference in Geneva as a vital scientific basis for international negotiations
on climate change. The said efforts culminated in the conception of the UNFCCC,
which was adopted in 1992 at Rio de Janeiro and came in to force in 1994. It re-
mains as one of the most widely supported international environmental agree-
ments with 193 countries currently party to it.
The decision making body of the UNFCCC is the Conference of the Parties
(CoP), which meets annually. The major agreement reached at the third CoP in
Kyoto in 1997, called the Kyoto Protocol and operational since February 2005,
under the broader framework of UNFCCC, forms the legal basis for international
climate change mitigation policies and programmes. The Protocol stipulates the
mechanisms of regulation to operationalise the GHG 3 abatement process through
specific commitments and other functional requirements. The mechanism, which
is intended to stabilize atmospheric GHG concentration to prevent detrimental an-
thropogenic effects to the climate, is based on the scientific understanding that in-
dustrially advanced countries (termed as the Annex 1 countries in the parlance of
the Protocol) bear the historical responsibility for the present state of excess con-
centration. Consequently, Annex 1 countries ought to devise legally binding
commitments to reduce their carbon emissions. These commitments are in the
form of controlling emissions to within stipulated permitted levels of emission
over a period of time. While the countries with commitments to limit GHG emis-
sions are directed to meet their targets mainly through national measures, the Pro-
tocol has created three market-based mechanisms as additional means of meeting
3

GHGs regulated under the Kyoto Protocol are Carbon dioxide (CO 2 ), Methane (CH 4 ),
Nitrous oxide (N 2 O), Hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), Perfluorocarbons (PFCs) and Sulphur
hexafluoride (SF 6 ).