This year’s UN climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan, marks the 29th gathering of the world’s leadership to combat global warming since the first “Conference of the Parties” in 1995.
Here are some of the most important moments in the history of climate negotiations:
1800s – For about 6,000 years before the Industrial Age, global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) remained around 280 parts per million (“ppm”). Many European scientists began to study how different gases trap heat, and in the 1890s Svante Arrhenius of Sweden calculated the temperature effect from doubling atmospheric CO2 levels, demonstrating that burning fossil fuels How will the planet warm?
1938 – British engineer Guy Callender believes that global temperatures are rising in line with rising levels of CO2, and hypothesizes that the two are linked.
1958 – American scientist Charles David Keeling began measuring CO2 levels at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii, resulting in the “Keeling Curve” graph that shows increasing CO2 concentrations.
1990- Scientists at the UN’s second World Climate Conference highlighted the dangers of global warming for nature and society. British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher called for binding emissions targets.
1992- Countries signed the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) at the Rio Earth Summit. The treaty establishes the idea of ”common but differentiated responsibilities”, meaning that developed countries should do more to tackle climate-warming emissions because they have historically emitted the most.
1995- UNFCCC signatories held the first “Conference of the Parties”, or COP, in Berlin, with the final document calling for legally binding emissions targets.
1997- At COP3 in Kyoto, Japan, parties agreed to different emissions reductions for each developed country. In the United States, Senate Republicans condemn the Kyoto Protocol as “dead on arrival”.
2000- After losing the US presidential election, Al Gore sparked a worldwide conversation on climate science and policy, which ultimately culminated in the 2006 documentary An Inconvenient Truth. The film won an Academy Award, while Gore and the United Nations Climate Science Authority – the intergovernmental panel on climate change – received the Nobel Peace Prize.
2001- US President George W. Bush has called the Kyoto Protocol “fatally flawed”, prompting the country’s effective withdrawal.
2005- The Kyoto Protocol goes into effect after Russia ratifies it, thereby meeting the requirement of ratification by at least 55 countries accounting for at least 55% of emissions.
2009- COP15 talks in Copenhagen almost collapsed after wrangling over the post-Kyoto framework, with countries instead voting to “focus” on a non-binding political statement.
2010- COP16 in Cancún fails to set new binding emissions targets, but the Cancún Agreement establishes a Green Climate Fund to help developing countries cut emissions and adapt to the conditions of a warming world.
2011- COP17 talks in Durban, South Africa, faltered after China, the United States and India refused to commit to binding emissions cuts before 2015. Delegates instead extended the Kyoto Protocol until 2017.
2012- As Russia, Japan and New Zealand oppose new emissions targets that do not extend to developing countries, countries at COP18 in Doha extend the Kyoto Protocol until 2020.
2013- For the first time in history, atmospheric CO2 levels crossed 400 ppm.
2015 – Global average temperatures rise by more than 1 °C above the pre-industrial average. The COP21 talks resulted in the Paris Agreement, the first agreement to call for increasingly ambitious emissions pledges from both developed and developing countries. Delegates also pledged to try to keep temperatures within 1.5 C (2.7 Fahrenheit).
2017- US President Donald Trump has promised to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement in 2020.
2018 – Teenage activist Greta Thunberg gained global attention when she protested outside the Swedish Parliament, and over time, rallied young people to join weekly climate protests around the world.
2020 – The annual COP has been postponed amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
2021 – Newly elected US President Joe Biden rejoined the Paris Agreement. Later at COP26, the Glasgow Treaty set a goal of using less coal and addressed some rules for trading carbon credits to offset emissions.
2022 – The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has warned that the world is at risk of catastrophic and irreversible climate change. Later that year, COP27 in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, agreed to create a loss and damage fund for costly climate disasters, but did nothing to address the emissions that fuel such disasters.
2023- At COP28 in the oil-producing United Arab Emirates, the country agreed to move away from the use of fossil fuels.
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