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Global Climate Change Digest
A Guide to Information on Greenhouse Gases and Ozone Depletion
Published July 1988 through June 1999

FROM VOLUME 8, NUMBER 1, JANUARY 1995

NEWS...
CLIMATE CONVENTION

Item #d95jan115

On December 16, the secretariat for the Framework Convention on Climate Change reported that 15 major industrialized countries had submitted national reports on their efforts to limit greenhouse gases. About half of them expect greenhouse emissions will increase in the absence of new measures; the others expect emissions to stabilize or decline by the year 2000 (as currently recommended in the convention). (See Intl. Environ. Rptr., pp. 6-7, Jan. 11 1995.)

The most recent conference of the Center for Environmental Information (Washington, D.C., Dec. 1994) focused on national action plans under the convention. Concern that many industrial countries (including the U.S.) may not even meet the short-term goals of the convention was a major theme. Despite this, at least three proposals to further tighten the convention requirements will probably be made at the first Conference of Parties, to be held in Berlin in March.

Less than half of the 36 industrial countries required to submit national reports had done so by the September 15 deadline of the convention, according to Jonathan Pershing of the U.S. State Department. Other speakers at the CEI conference emphasized that energy use in the developing countries will soon overwhelm anything the industrialized countries do in the short term. John Topping of the Climate Institute called for drastic and immediate technology transfer as the only way to check this future contribution to greenhouse emissions. A general account of the conference appears in Chem. Eng. News, pp. 28-29, Dec. 19.

Information on national reports and other aspects of the convention, including a quarterly Climate Change Bulletin, are available from the Info. Unit on Climate Change, UNEP, Geneva Executive Ctr., CP 356, 1219 Châtelaine, Switz., in paper form or on the Internet.