ABSTRACT
The Framework Convention on Climate Change (FCCC) is now five years old and a great deal of pressure is mounting to ensure that a legally binding protocol to reduce CO2 emissions will be adopted at the Third Conference of the Parties to the Convention in Kyoto (December 1997). The path from the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in 1992 (UNCED) has not been straightforward, and many policies and measures that were promised at the Rio conference have been dropped or watered down as the force of realpolitik has been brought to bear on the UNCED rhetoric. It is against a background of empty promises and increasing pressures to move the process forward (prompted by a potent combination of public concern, election year politics and increasing scientific consensus on the threat posed by climate change) that the negotiations up to COP3 will take place.
