The Climate Problem, and the Framework Convention

In one line

The Framework Convention on Climate Change 1992 sets an objective, states five principles, and imposes obligations on every Party, and it is the parent of everything else in the climate regime.

In exam wording: the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, adopted on 9 May 1992, opened for signature at Rio on 4 June 1992 and in force from 21 March 1994, states in article 2 the objective of stabilising greenhouse gas concentrations at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system, within a time frame sufficient to allow ecosystems to adapt naturally, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner.

The science a lawyer needs

Certain gases in the atmosphere allow short-wave solar radiation in and absorb the long-wave radiation the surface re-emits. That is the greenhouse effect, and without it the planet would be uninhabitably cold. Human activity has raised the concentration of these gases, principally carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuel, methane from agriculture and waste, and nitrous oxide, so more heat is retained.

Four legal consequences follow from the physics and they are what make climate change hard for law.

1. It is a stock, not a flow. Carbon dioxide persists for a very long time, so today's concentration is the accumulation of two centuries.
2. It is perfectly mixed. A tonne emitted anywhere has the same effect, so there is no relation between where the emission occurs and where the harm falls.
3. The sources are everything. Not a few factories but every vehicle, farm, furnace and power station.
4. The lag is long. Emissions today produce warming for decades.

Compare the ozone problem, where the sources were a few dozen manufacturers and the substitutes existed, and the whole difference between the two regimes becomes visible.

Article 1: the definitions

Adverse effects of climate change means changes in the physical environment or biota resulting from climate change which have significant deleterious effects on the composition, resilience or productivity of natural and managed ecosystems, on the operation of socio-economic systems, or on human health and welfare.

Climate change means a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods. Note that the Convention's definition is confined to human-caused change; the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change uses a wider definition, and the difference occasionally matters.

Climate system means the totality of the atmosphere, hydrosphere, biosphere and geosphere and their interactions.

Emissions, greenhouse gases, reservoir, sink and source are all defined. A sink is any process, activity or mechanism which removes a greenhouse gas from the atmosphere; a source is any process or activity which releases one.