ABSTRACT
Climate change gained prominence on the international political agenda in the 1980s, in part due to an emerging scientific consensus about the anthropogenic causes of the problem, and in part because of heightened public awareness. The commencement of treaty negotiations in 1990 exposed the diverging viewpoints of developed and developing countries on international climate policy (Bodansky 1993). The 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) did not resolve the underlying tensions between countries but delivered a compromise through a framework agreement that postponed the more difficult challenges, including questions related to its overall ambition and the distribution of efforts. All countries acknowledged that developed countries had emitted the bulk of greenhouse gases during their rapid industrialization processes and that these countries should lead by reducing their emissions and provide financial and technological assistance to developing countries for environmental justice. However, the Convention neither included legally binding emission reduction targets nor did it specify how much assistance was needed.
