International efforts to address climate change
國際社會努力應對氣候變化問題

The international community has been making some efforts to deal with the climate change phenomenon for the past few decades.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted during the 1992 Earth summit in Rio de Janeiro.

The objective of the treaty was to "stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system".
Though considered legally non-binding, the Convention became the first international treaty on climate change.

It notes that Parties should act on the basis of "common but differentiated responsibilities".

The 1997 Kyoto Protocol came into force in 2005. There are currently 196 Parties involved.

Its first commitment period began in 2008 and ended in 2012, where industrialized countries need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 5.2% from their 1990 levels.

The main feature of the Protocol is that it established legally-binding commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.

In 2007, the UN Climate Change Conference was held in Indonesia, and it focused on the further reduction of greenhouse gases after the initial Kyoto Protocol agreement.

So the Bali Road Map was adopted -- then as a two-year process -- ahead of a binding agreement in Copenhagen in 2009.

The Copenhagen Accord was drafted, saying actions should be taken to keep temperature increases below two degrees Celsius.

However, it did not pass unanimously, so the document does not contain any legally-binding commitments for reducing CO2 emissions.

In 2011, the Durban Platform was reached in South Africa after a 60-hour marathon negotiation session.

The agreement is notable in that, for the first time, it included developing countries such as China and India, as well as the US which refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

Onto Doha then in 2012, and an agreement was reached to extend the life of the Kyoto Protocol until 2020, and to strengthen the 2011 Durban Platform.

During last year's conference in Lima, the EU said it would aim for a legally-binding 40% drop in emissions by 2030, against carbon output in 1990 as a baseline. While China eyed a carbon emission peak for around 2030, whilst agreeing to control its CO2 emissions from energy at approximately 10 billion tons in 2030, with per capita emissions at seven tons.