‘Our Common Future’ (The Brundtland Report) is published by the United Nations. It presents a focus on global sustainable development including the problem of climate change, and lays the groundwork for the summit in Rio, 1992.
NASA scientist James Hansen testifies in the US Senate that global warming is real and has begun.
The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is established, its purpose being to provide objective, scientific information about the causes and effects of climate change.
Summit in Rio, Brazil, setting up the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) with 196 member countries, establishing the foundation for the annual COP-meetings with the aim of working for progress in dealing with climate change.
COP1 takes place in Berlin as the first UNFCCC Conference of the Parties. The Conference of the Parties (COP) is the name of the annual meetings of the countries which are parties to the climate convention, at present 197 countries. The COP-meetings usually take place every year in late November/early December and they are numbered, for instance COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009.
COP3 in Kyoto, Japan: The Kyoto Protocol is the first treaty through which countries commit to limit greenhouse gas emissions in accordance with agreed individual targets
Publication of a scientific paper in Nature about global warming shows The Hockey Stick graph which is a reconstruction of climate data over the last 1000 years. The graph, shaped like a hockey stick, shows a long-term slow cooling trend which turns into relatively rapid warming in the 20th century. A version of the graph is used in the IPCC report (2001).
President George W. Bush announces that the United States will not implement the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.
2001 IPCC third assessment report points to ‘new and stronger evidence’ that the emission of greenhouse gases due to human activity is the main reason for global warming
The Kyoto protocol enters into force for the 192 countries which have signed the treaty
