United Nations Climate Change Conference


The United Nations Climate Change Conferences are yearly conferences held in the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They serve as the formal meeting of the UNFCCC parties—the conference of the parties —to assess progress in dealing with climate change, and beginning in the mid-1990s, to negotiate the Kyoto Protocol to establish legally binding obligations for developed countries to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. Starting in 2005 the conferences have also served as the "Conference of the Parties Serving as the Meeting of Parties to the Kyoto Protocol" ; also parties to the convention that are not parties to the protocol can participate in protocol-related meetings as observers. From 2011 to 2015, the meetings were used to negotiate the Paris Agreement as part of the Durban platform, which created a general path towards climate action. Any final text of a COP must be agreed by consensus.
The first UN Climate Change Conference was held in 1995 in Berlin.

Role of climate change conferences

Member states of the UNFCCC meet annually at the Conference of the Parties to assess progress in combating climate change. COP provides a platform for governments, NGOs, and the private sector to collaborate and determine strategies for global climate policy and action. These conferences offer an opportunity to discuss climate governance measures, reduce carbon emissions, and promote the transition to more sustainable energy sources.
The UN Climate Change Conferences serve as key forums for shaping global policy, where representatives of various countries jointly address the reduction of global greenhouse gas emissions and support states in enhancing their resilience to climate impacts.

Rotating Principle of the COPs

When the member states of the UNFCCC drafted the rules and procedures of the annual conference, they decided the event should rotate between the 5 UN groups. That order being, WEOG - Western European and Other Group, Africa Group, Asia and Pacific Group, Eastern European Group and lastly GRULAC - Group of Latin American and the Caribbean. Ideally, the group nominates a country to host the event and also provide the COP President to chair the meeting. However, there have been years when the group only provided the COP President but the host country was from a different country or group.
This happened in 1996, when the COP President was from Zimbabwe but Switzerland hosted. In 1999, the COP President was from Poland, but Berlin was the COP host city. Also from the Eastern European Group, Hungary provided the COP President, and Milan, Italy was the host venue in 2003. In 2017, Bonn, Germany hosted the COP and Fiji provided the COP Presidency. In 2019, Chile was to host but had to cancel due to civil unrest. They provided the presidency whilst Madrid, Spain ended up being the host venue.
In total, Germany and Poland have been the host country 3 times each, Morocco and Argentina each twice. 27 cities have hosted COPs, with Bonn, Germany, Buenos Aires, Argentina and Marrakesh, Morocco each hosting twice.
One COP did not close - COP 6 in the Hague, due to disruptions and had to be suspended. An additional session – COP bis, or COP 6.5 was planned in Bonn, Germany the year after to officially close the session. There was only one year that the COP was cancelled – 2020, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

List of conferences, presidents and locations

1995: COP 1, Berlin, Germany

The first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties took place from 28 March to 7 April 1995 in Berlin, Germany. Delegates from 117 Parties and 53 Observer States attended the conference. One of the central issues of COP 1 was the adequacy of individual country commitments, resulting in a mandate to begin a process toward individual country action for the period beyond 2000. This included strengthening the commitments of Annex I Parties in Article 4.2 and.
Delegates also established: a pilot phase for Joint Implementation projects; an agreement that the Permanent Secretariat should be located in Bonn, Germany; and the Subsidiary Bodies. Conference delegates did not reach consensus on the Rules of Procedures, and a decision on voting rules was deferred to COP 2.

1996: COP 2, Geneva, Switzerland

COP 2 took place from 8–19 July 1996 in Geneva, Switzerland. Its ministerial declaration was noted on 18 July 1996, and reflected a United States position statement presented by Timothy Wirth, former Under Secretary for Global Affairs for the United States Department of State at that meeting, which:
  1. Accepted the scientific findings on climate change proffered by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in its second assessment ;
  2. Rejected uniform "harmonized policies" in favor of flexibility;
  3. Called for "legally binding mid-term targets".

    1997: COP 3, Kyoto, Japan

COP 3 took place on 1–11 December 1997 in Kyoto, Japan. After intensive negotiations, it adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which outlined the greenhouse gas emissions reduction obligation for Annex I countries, along with what came to be known as Kyoto mechanisms such as emissions trading, clean development mechanism and joint implementation. In a separate decision of the Conference of Parties, countries agreed to a range of national security exemptions which stated that bunker fuels and emissions from multilateral military operations would not be part of national emissions totals and would be reported outside of those totals. Most industrialised countries and some central European economies in transition agreed to legally binding reductions in greenhouse gas emissions of an average of 6 to 8% below 1990 levels between the years 2008–2012, defined as the first emissions budget period. The United States would be required to reduce its total emissions an average of 7% below 1990 levels; however, Congress did not ratify the treaty after Clinton signed it. The Bush administration explicitly rejected the protocol in 2001.

1998: COP 4, Buenos Aires, Argentina

COP 4 took place on 2–14 November 1998 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It had been expected that the remaining issues unresolved in Kyoto would be finalised at this meeting. However, the complexity and difficulty of finding agreement on these issues proved insurmountable, and instead the parties adopted a two-year "Buenos Aires Plan of Action" to advance efforts and to devise mechanisms for implementing the Kyoto Protocol, to be completed by 2000. During COP 4, Argentina and Kazakhstan expressed their commitment to take on the greenhouse gas emissions reduction obligation, the first two non-Annex countries to do so.

1999: COP 5, Bonn, Germany

COP 5 took place between 25 October and 5 November 1999, in Bonn, Germany. It was primarily a technical meeting, and did not reach major conclusions. 165 Parties were represented at the conference. Conference delegates continued their work toward fulfilling the Buenos Aires Plan of Action adopted at COP 4. In the last two days of the Conference, COP 5 adopted 32 draft decisions and conclusions related to the review of the implementation of commitments. Despite reaching no major conclusions, COP-5 served as an important "intermediate step" laying out the difficult path to finalizing the Kyoto Protocol at COP-6.

2000: COP 6, The Hague, Netherlands

COP 6 took place on 13–25 November 2000, in The Hague, Netherlands. Many in the international community and domestic environmental groups saw this meeting as a chance to finalize a Protocol that could secure ratification. Specifically, COP-6 was intended to complete work on the two-year Buenos Aires Plan of Action, agreed upon at COP-4. However, these groups saw the United States as a roadblock to finalise such a Protocol. The discussions evolved rapidly into a high-level negotiation over the major political issues. These included major controversy over the United States' proposal to allow credit for carbon "sinks" in forests and agricultural lands that would satisfy a major proportion of the US emissions reductions in this way; disagreements over consequences for non-compliance by countries that did not meet their emission reduction targets; and difficulties in resolving how developing countries could obtain financial assistance to deal with adverse effects of climate change and meet their obligations to plan for measuring and possibly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
In the final hours of COP 6, despite some compromises agreed between the United States and some EU countries, notably the United Kingdom, the EU countries as a whole, led by Denmark and Germany, rejected the compromise positions, and the talks in The Hague collapsed. Jan Pronk, the President of COP 6, suspended COP 6 without agreement, with the expectation that negotiations would later resume. It was later announced that the COP 6 meetings would be resumed in Bonn, Germany, in the second half of July. The next regularly scheduled meeting of the parties to the UNFCCC, COP 7, had been set for Marrakesh, Morocco, in October–November 2001.

2001: COP 6-2, Bonn, Germany

COP 6 negotiations resumed on 16–27 July 2001, in Bonn, Germany, with little progress having been made in resolving the differences that had produced an impasse in The Hague. However, this meeting took place after George W. Bush had become the President of the United States and had rejected the Kyoto Protocol in March 2001; as a result the United States delegation to this meeting declined to participate in the negotiations related to the Protocol and chose to take the role of observer at the meeting. As the other parties negotiated the key issues, agreement was reached on most of the major political issues, to the surprise of most observers, given the low expectations that preceded the meeting. The agreements included:
  1. Flexible mechanisms: The "flexibility mechanisms" which the United States had strongly favored when the Protocol was initially put together, including emissions trading, joint implementation, and the Clean Development Mechanism which allows industrialised countries to fund emissions reduction activities in developing countries as an alternative to domestic emission reductions. One of the key elements of this agreement was that there would be no quantitative limit on the credit a country could claim from use of these mechanisms provided domestic action constituted a significant element of the efforts of each Annex B country to meet their targets.
  2. Carbon sinks: It was agreed that credit would be granted for broad activities that absorb carbon from the atmosphere or store it, including forest and cropland management, and re-vegetation, with no over-all cap on the amount of credit that a country could claim for sinks activities. In the case of forest management, an Appendix Z establishes country-specific caps for each Annex I country. Thus, a cap of 13 million tons could be credited to Japan. For cropland management, countries could receive credit only for carbon sequestration increases above 1990 levels.
  3. Compliance: Final action on compliance procedures and mechanisms that would address non-compliance with Protocol provisions was deferred to COP 7, but included broad outlines of consequences for failing to meet emissions targets that would include a requirement to "make up" shortfalls at 1.3 tons to 1, suspension of the right to sell credits for surplus emissions reductions, and a required compliance action plan for those not meeting their targets.
  4. Financing: There was agreement on the establishment of three new funds to provide assistance for needs associated with climate change: a fund for climate change that supports a series of climate measures; a least-developed-country fund to support National Adaptation Programs of Action; and a Kyoto Protocol adaptation fund supported by a CDM levy and voluntary contributions.
A number of operational details attendant upon these decisions remained to be negotiated and agreed upon, and these were the major issues considered by the COP 7 meeting that followed.