Climate Change is the single most deciding factor in present global politics. Regarding climate change science you may have heard quite a lot from your courses or science news, but not much comprehensive help is out there to tell us what exactly are those climate change conferences known more popularly as COP (Conference of Parties) organized annually under UNFCCC. So time for a quick story telling.
In 1992, a very big event took place which made the world come together to discuss and solve global environment and development proceedings. It was known as Earth Summit. One of the many major outcomes of it was Framework Convention on Climate Change, one of the important legally binding agreements which led to the birth of Kyoto Protocol.
Now Kyoto Protocol is a treaty which, if I may say in plain simple words, aims to protect the planet from carbon emissions from human activities by bringing few restrictions and conventions. It divided the countries into three groups:
Annex 1: Developed economies or industrialized countries
Annex 2: Developed countries which may provide financial and/or technical support to developing countries to mitigate climate change/carbon emission while helping them to grow economically.
Non annex countries: The low income developing countries who may join Annex 1 groups once they are sufficiently developed.
Now The first two groups are given some restrictions to follow on their carbon emissions. They are sufficiently developed which can be contributed to the fact of their past industrially heavy activities which contributed to greater carbon emission per capita and hence the burden to set things right. Their less developed counterparts as per now develop not much heavy restrictions.
So United Nations Climate Change Conferences are held every year to update this very progress and have been held annually since 1995. The UNFCCC was passed officially on 1994 you see and Kyoto Protocol was introduced in 1997 at COP 3.
The Kyoto Protocol states that the countries need to reduce their emissions by 5% with 1990 as base years (This number may vary differently for different countries but let us talk on average number and keep the details for another day). But it was not ratified until 55 countries with combined contribution of 55% as per 1990 standards signed the protocol, and hence it was not till 2005 at COP 11, Montreal, that Kyoto Protocol came into force, when finally Russia agreed to give its support.
So there were some countries, developed, who did not want to slow down their economic activities and hence carbon emissions, like US, Australia, and some who points out that the lesser developing countries are enjoying far more freedom of emissions. And eventually over the years negotiations happen over the fate of planet due to the carbon emissions by anthropogenic activities.
What we should know about Climate Change 