By Joanna Depledge Twenty years ago today, on 21 March 1994, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change came into force. The world was, of course, very different then.  The EU had only 12 members. The Russian Federation and Eastern Europe were in the throes of massive political and economic dislocation.  The internet was […]

By Tim Rayner and Andrew Jordan As the Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change convenes for the 19th time in Warsaw, the likelihood that the world can fulfill the Convention’s ultimate objective of avoiding ‘dangerous climate change’ is looking ever slimmer. Since the mid-1990s, that objective has been widely […]

By Charlotte Streck Over the last three decades, climate change has graduated from an environmental concern to a matter of geopolitics in the twenty-first century. The political and socio-economic environment in which international climate negotiations take place has seen remarkable changes. The problem of climate change has become more urgent and its effects more visible. […]

By John Barrett While there have been a number of papers that calculate consumption-based GHG emissions, we were keen to present a paper [now published in Climate Policy Journal, Vol. 13, issue 4] that documents its application to climate policy, recognising the uncertainty in the calculations and presenting the future research challenges. In this blog […]

By David Levy A milestone on the road to catastrophic climate change was reached last Thursday, May 9th, when the Mauna Loa research center in Hawaii recorded atmospheric CO2 levels above 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time. The level during pre-industrial times was around 280 ppm, and has been rising at an […]

By Robert Gampfer Over the past two decades, civil society organizations (CSOs) have become integral to global climate negotiations. In 2011, 1490 organizations were accredited as observers; most of which were environmental groups, research institutions, and business associations. Moreover, 70% of national delegations to the COPs (2011) included CSO representatives among their members. Both activists […]

Some reflections on the Climate Policy Special Issue  (vol 13, supp 01, 2013) “Low carbon drivers for a sustainable world”.