Climate Change
The average temperature of the earth's surface is expected to increase by 1.8° C to 4° C by the year 2100 - a rapid and profound change. The principal reason for this is a century and a half of industrialization: the burning of ever-greater quantities of oil, gasoline, and coal, the cutting of forests, and the practice of certain farming methods. These activities have increased the amount of "greenhouse gases" in the atmosphere. Such gases occur naturally - they prevent the outgoing radiation from escaping from the earth's surface to space and are critical for life on earth, but in augmented quantities, they are leading to global warming, with potentially disastrous consequences for the environment and human beings.
Given the enormity of the potential damage, the world's governments signed, in 1992, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The UNFCCC came into force in 1994, with the aim of achieving stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. It was ratified by 188 states and the European Community, making it one of the most widely supported international environmental agreements.
The Kyoto Protocol, an international agreement linked to the UNFCCC, was signed in 1997. Recognizing that developed countries are principally responsible for the current high levels of GHG emissions in the atmosphere, the Protocol places a heavier burden on developed nations under the principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities".
With this in mind, the Convention had categorized countries in two groups: Annex I countries (developed countries), and Non-Annex I countries (developing countries).
Annex I countries that ratified the Kyoto Protocol committed themselves to decrease their emissions of greenhouse gases by an average 5 % compared to their 1990 emission levels, for the 2008-12 period (known as the first commitment period).