ABSTRACT
The years 1989 to 1992 marked a period of reinvention in global climate governance, as the Group of Seven (G7) retreated in favour of the new divided, development-first regime of the United Nations. The 1989 Paris Summit in particular saw a notable rise in both the volume and scope of climate deliberations, devoting one third of its final declaration to global environmental concerns. In 1991 at London, the G7 summit focused specifically on the forthcoming UN Earth Summit scheduled for June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, galvanizing collective leadership and support for ensuring the successful completion of a climate change convention by that time. The 1992 Munich Summit, with its first ever pre-summit assembly of G7 environment ministers, supported the international focus on global environmental issues that the Earth Summit generated, and began to secure environmental issues on the G7's standing agenda. Paris was the first time the summit had made more than one commitment on climate change.
