Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
on a Conference of the Parties (COP) consisting of delegates from each
signatory nation that meets annually to oversee the implementation of the
agreement's broad mandate. Though the treaty is nonbinding, each annual
COP has the latitude to negotiate binding commitments, called proto-
cols, to fulfill the convention's objectives. The original treaty assigned a
permanent secretariat to serve the COPs and designated two subsidiary
bodies— one for scientific and technological advice, the other for imple-
mentation— to further assist nations in meeting the terms of the conven-
tion. The UNFCCC also designated the Global Environment Fund (again,
part of the World Bank), the U.N. Environment Programme, and the U.N.
Development Programme as the primary financial mechanisms for imple-
menting the treaty.
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The development of the UNFCCC occurred separately and in paral-
lel to preparations for UNCED, but politically the convention on climate
change was born of the larger Earth Summit. Like UNCED, the UNFCCC
was built upon the contested concept of sustainable development, and
debates about the function and structure of the UNFCCC reflected the
same preoccupation with economic development and foreign aid.
Negotiations leading up to the introduction of the UNFCCC at Rio
turned on two main issues. The first, not surprisingly, was the role of the
developing world in curbing global emissions. Led in part by the host coun-
try, Brazil, developing nations feared that a climate change treaty could
force poor nations to shoulder the costs of dealing with a problem, global
warming, for which wealthier nations bore a disproportionate historical
responsibility. Even the parsimonious Americans recognized that the
global South needed financial assistance to support scientific efforts to at
least monitor CO
2
, and the Bush administration expressed a willingness to
spend money on these general scientific efforts, specifically on projects to
develop more efficient technologies through the GEF. The administration
committed $250 million to the GEF, with $50 million of that sum slated
for climate change.
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But beyond this modest GEF sum (the Japanese com-
mitted $2.5 billion), the Bush administration was unwilling to provide less
directed forms of foreign assistance associated with emissions reductions
and sustainable development, a point of divergence from other industrial-
ized nations. For the sake of Bush's domestic constituencies, William Reilly
took pains to point out that the UNFCCC was “not a Marshall Plan for
the developing countries.”
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