ABSTRACT
In 1991 we wrote a book entitled Mountain World in Danger (Nilsson and Pitt, 1991) which drew attention to the potentially damaging effects of climate change on the cryosphere, the mountain and snow regions. This book is in many senses a complement to Mountain World in Danger. The protection of the cryosphere, or any other part of the biosphere for that matter, requires protection of the atmosphere which is so deeply bound up with the other ecosystems on our planet. Such protection, even if the data are incomplete or uncertain, requires urgent precautionary action on many fronts – legal, educational, economic, political, and social. New kinds of activities and instruments are called for which will at once mobilize the necessary political will and popular will. One such new animal in the international jungle is the subject of this book, the Framework Convention on Climate Change (FC). The FC, despite an apparently conventional legalistic form, is much more than a law and maybe the most important instrument to emerge from the Earth Summit at Rio promoting (to use the buzzword) sustainable development.
