What are the most important treaties/protocols related to climate change that have seen the light of the day?

Question

I am doing a paper on the landmark internatinal treaties on climate change that may have been cleared/ratified on a global basis. Can someone well read in this field tell me which ones are the bigges? I know the "Kyoto Protocol" is supposed to be really big! Thanks!!

Answer 1

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change is the only real international treaty on climate change. The Kyoto Agreement was made under it at the third meeting in Kyoto, Japan, but Kyoto finishes in 2012. The last UNFCCC talks (number 13) were held at Bali, and it was agreed that the formulation of a new agreement would begin at the next big meeting (15), at Copenhagen in December 2009.

Kyoto was agreed to by all 189 countries in the UNFCCC, but wasn't ratified by the US (and was only ratified by Australia in december last year, after a change of government). "Developing nations" didn't have to do anything much under kyoto, so they didn't have to ratify (ratification is basically putting the parts of the agreement into national law).

There's a good history of the UNFCCC, including all of it's most important meetings at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UNFCCC