Current Status Of Climate Change Research And Policy In The Levant; The Jordan Case Full Text | Ifi Study

Region-Specific Study | August 2009
Current Status of Climate Change Research and Policy in the Levant; The Jordan Case Full Text Manar Fayyad
Rising concern over greenhouse gas emissions and their impact on the climate of the earth led to the international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. This treaty, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was legally non-binding in that it did not set mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations and contained no enforcement provisions; however, it did contain provisions for updates – called protocols – that would set limits on emissions. The main update adopted at the end of 1997 is the Kyoto Protocol which aimed at stabilizing greenhouse gas emissions to a level that would prevent interference with the Earth’s climate. By January 2009 183 parties had ratified the Kyoto Protocols. In this Protocol the countries of the world were divided into three main groups:
• Annex I countries (industrialized countries)
• Annex II countries (developed countries which pay for costs of developing countries)
• Developing countries.