Sustainability and policy - Climate Change: Biological and Human Aspects - page 453

However, the report was not clear as to how this might be achieved. This was largely
because no country had a significant long-term energy strategy (although a few -
such as France and Norway - had short- and medium-term plans that were being
implemented).
8.1.7 UnitedNations'ConferenceontheEnvironmentandDevelopment:
RiodeJaneiro(1992)
In 1992 in Rio de Janeiro the UN held a Conference on Environment and Development
(known as UNCED for short). It was convened on much the same basis as the
Stockholm Conference but unlike Stockholm had two distinct foci: biodiversity and
climate change. Indeed, at the conference two international conventions were signed
relating to each of these subjects. The biodiversity convention was in essence the
realisation of recognition in international policy terms of the World Conservation
Strategy 's and the Brundtland report's aspirations of the importance of biodiversity.
The climate-related outcome was the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change
(FCCC).
In the run up to UNCED over a score or so of nations had declared targets for
the reduction of carbon emissions. The EU had a target of carbon emissions to be
no higher than they were in 1990 by the year 2000, whereas the UK's target was
emissions no higher than 1990 by 2005 and a reduction in all greenhouse gases by
20%. Not all these targets, and those of nearly all other nations, were met. The UK did
manage to reduce its carbon emissions to below 1990 by 2004 and had even greater
success with its total greenhouse emissions; however, as we shall see below, these
savings owed much to a switch to natural gas (especially for electricity generation),
with its higher energy content per carbon atom than coal or oil. Meanwhile, prior to
UNCED the USA had no official targets, although it did sign up to the FCCC.
The convention lacked any clearly binding, short-term commitments to reducing
greenhouse emissions. What it did was to establish a process for negotiating further
measures and introduced mechanisms for transferring finance and technology to the
less-developed nations. One of the UNCED's successes was that in addition to the
nations that already had adopted some form of greenhouse policy, the USA signed
the convention.
The UNCED had its failures too. These included the removal of much of the
potential from the FCCC's original draft but also proposals with climate implications
outside of the FCCC. For instance, the UNCED Convention on Biodiversity was
not signed by the USA. This convention would have increased the financial value of
standing tropical forests, in that there would have been equitable sharing (between
developed and less-developed nations) of the benefits that flow from using genetic
resources (of which tropical forests abound). President George Bush Snr, perceiving
that signing would have a cost for the USA in employment terms, and with an
eye on the forthcoming presidential election, declined to sign. Another failure with
greenhouse implications was a third convention on Sustainable Forestry. Here the
international gulf between the developed and less-developed nations was so great
that before the UNCED began the convention had been watered down to a set of
so-called Forest Principles.