Little Cooperation Seen at COP12

摘要

Expectations of significant action may have been low during the seven years between the 1997 3rd Conference of the Parties (COP3) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), when the Kyoto Protocol was first adopted, and COP10 in 2004, when the Russian Federation ratified the Protocol, allowing the treaty to enter into force. For those years, COP was little more than a forum for discussion, while active Parties moved toward meeting their individual, but not-yet-obligatory, targets, and waited for one of the remaining "large" emitters (Australia, Russia, and/or the United States) to ratify the Protocol, at which time it would become legally binding.