The Stockholm Dilemma: Climate Negotiations and Emission Growth

A stylized world map in green against a red background, surrounded by an olive branch emblem, with the text 'This is Not Working' at the bottom.

How developing countries took control of climate negotiations and what that means for emission reduction.

The main reason why, despite countless scientific warnings about dangerous consequences, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions continue to increase is rarely mentioned. Yet it’s been obvious for several years – at least to anyone willing to see it. It’s this: most countries outside Western Europe, North America and Australasia are either unconcerned about the impact of GHGs on the climate or don’t regard the issue as a priority, focusing instead for example on economic growth and energy security. Yet these countries, comprising about 84 percent of humanityⁱ, are today the source of about 77 percent of emissions; 88 percent if the United States, which has now joined their ranks, is included.ⁱⁱ Therefore, unless they change their policies radically – and there’s no serious evidence of their so doing – there’s no realistic prospect of the implementation of the urgent and substantial cuts in GHG emissions called for by many Western scientists.

To understand how this has happened, I believe it’s useful to review the history of environmental negotiation by focusing in particular on six UN-sponsored conferences: Stockholm in 1972, Rio in 1992, Kyoto in 1997, Copenhagen in 2009, Paris in 2015 and Belém (Brazil) in 2025.

Stockholm 1972

In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s many Western environmentalists were seriously concerned that technological development, economic growth and resource depletion risked irreversible damage to humanity and to the environment.ⁱⁱⁱ Clearly a global problem, it was agreed that it had to be tackled by international, i.e. UN-sponsored, action.

The result was the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm in 1972.^iv From its outset it was recognised that, if the conference was to succeed, an immediate problem had to be solved: the perceived risk was almost exclusively a Western preoccupation, so how might poorer countries be persuaded to get involved?^v

After all, technical and industrial development were essentially the basis of the West’s economic success and that was something the rest of the world was understandably anxious to emulate – not least to alleviate the desperate poverty of many hundreds of millions of people.^vi The diplomatic manoeuvrings needed to resolve this seemingly irreconcilable conflict set the scene for what I will refer to as ‘the Stockholm Dilemma’ – i.e. the conflict between Western fears for the environment and poorer countries’ aspirations for economic growth. It was resolved, or more accurately deferred, at the time by the linguistic nightmare of the conference’s concluding Declaration which asserted that, although environmental damage was caused by Western economic growth, it was also caused by the poorer world’s lack of economic growth.^vii

After 1972, Western environmental concerns were overshadowed by the struggle to deal with successive oil and economic crises.^viii However two important European reports, the Brandt Report in 1980 and the Brundtland Report in 1987, dealt with the economic gulf between the West and the so-called Third World.^ix In particular, Brundtland – echoing Stockholm – concluded that, because poverty causes environmental problems, the needs of the world’s poor should be given overriding priority; a principle to be enshrined in the climate agreement signed in Rio. The solution was the now familiar ‘sustainable development’.^x

Rio 1992

Western environmental concerns were hugely re-energised in the late 1980s when the doctrine of dangerous (possibly catastrophic) global warming caused by mankind’s emissions of GHGs, especially carbon dioxide (CO₂), burst onto the scene.^xi As a result, the UN organised the landmark Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) – the ‘Earth Summit’ held in Rio in 1992.^xii It was the first of a long series of climate-related international conferences that led for example to the so-called ‘historic’ Paris Agreement in 2015.

A key outcome of the 1992 Earth Summit was the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Adopted in 1992 and commonly known as ‘the Convention’, it’s an international treaty that came into force in 1994. It remains to this day the definitive legal authority regarding climate change.^xiii Article 2 sets out its overall objective:

‘The ultimate objective of this Convention and any related legal instruments that the Conference of the Parties may adopt is to achieve … stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.’

It’s an objective that’s failed. Far from being stabilised, after 1992 emissions accelerated and, by 2025, emissions had grown by over 65 per cent.^xiv This is essentially because the Convention attempted to solve the Stockholm Dilemma by dividing the world into two blocs: Annex I countries (essentially the West and ex-Soviet Union countries – the ‘developed’ countries) and non-Annex I countries (the rest of the world – the ‘developing’ countries). This distinction has had huge and lasting consequences – arising in particular from the Convention’s Article 4.7:

‘The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement their commitments under the Convention … will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties.’^xv [My emphasis]

In other words, developing countries were, in accordance with Brundtland’s conclusion, expressly authorised to give overriding priority to economic growth and poverty eradication – even if that meant increasing emissions. And that’s why the Annex I/non-Annex I bifurcation has plagued international climate negotiations ever since: for example, it’s the main reason for the Copenhagen debacle in 2009 and for the Paris failure in 2015 (see below).

Western countries had hoped – even expected – that the Rio bifurcation would in time be modified so that, in line with their development, major developing countries would eventually become members of the Annex I group.^xvi But such hopes were dashed at the first post-Rio climate ‘Conference Of the Parties’ (COP) held in Berlin in 1995 (COP1) when it was agreed that there must be no new obligation imposed on any non-Annex I country.

This principle, ‘the Berlin Mandate’, meant that the bifurcation and its associated ‘common but differentiated responsibility’ principle were institutionalised as tenets of the Convention.^xvii And, before the next climate conference in 1996 (COP2 in Geneva), G77+China made it clear that this should not be changed.^xviii

Kyoto 1997

The impact of this was made harshly apparent at the next conference: COP3 in Kyoto in 1997. Kyoto was supposed to be critically important – the original hope had been that negotiations would result in all countries accepting commitments to reduce their GHG emissions. But, because the US decided that it wouldn’t accept obligations that didn’t apply to other major countries^xix and because of the Berlin Mandate, in the event the agreed Kyoto Protocol reduction obligations applied only to a few, largely Western, countries.^xx As a result and because developing countries refused even to acknowledge that they might accept some future obligation, it was becoming obvious to some observers that the UN process was getting nowhere – somehow the developing countries had to be persuaded that emission reduction was in their best interests.

But how? The passage of 25 years hadn’t resolved the Stockholm Dilemma – difficult enough in 1972, the UNFCCC bifurcation and the Berlin Mandate had made it worse. Yet it was recognised that, without these, developing countries might simply refuse to be involved in climate negotiations, making the whole process meaningless – something the UN and Western countries were unwilling to contemplate. So, if Kyoto was a failure, it was arguably a necessary failure if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction in due course. And that was the story for the next twelve years: at successive COP conferences the major developing countries, ignoring increasingly dire climate warnings from Western scientists, refused to consider amending the UNFCCC bifurcation.

A result of that refusal was that many developing countries’ economies continued their spectacular growth, resulting in rising living standards and unprecedented poverty reduction.^xxi But inevitably emissions also continued to grow: in just 12 years, from 1997 (Kyoto) to 2009 (Copenhagen) and despite 12 COPs, they increased by over 30%.^xxii

Copenhagen 2009

In 2007 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC), a body that reports every seven years on the current physical scientific understanding of climate change, published its fourth report (AR4) – a report that intensified the West’s insistence that urgent and substantial emission cuts were essential.^xxiii

A result was an ‘Action Plan’ agreed at the 2007 climate conference (COP13) in Bali.^xxiv It set out how it was hoped all countries would come together at Copenhagen in 2009 (COP15) to agree a comprehensive and binding deal to take the necessary global action. Many observers regarded this as hugely significant: Ban Ki-moon, then UN Secretary General, speaking at Copenhagen said, ‘We have a chance – a real chance, here and now – to change the course of our history’’.^xxv And, as always, dire warnings were issued about the consequences of failure: UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown for example warned that, if the conference failed to achieve a deal, ‘it will be irretrievably too late’.^xxvi

There was one seemingly encouraging development at Bali: developing countries accepted for the first time that emission reduction by non-Annex I countries might at least be discussed – although they insisted that developed countries were not doing enough to meet their Kyoto obligations.^xxvii But the key question of how far the developing countries might go at Copenhagen remained obscure – for example was it at least possible that the larger ‘emerging economies’ such as China and India and major OPEC countries such as Iran and Saudi Arabia might cease to be classified as ‘developing’? The EU and US not unreasonably thought that should happen, especially as it was by then obvious that, unless all major emitting countries, including therefore big developing economies, were involved, an emission cutting agreement would be neither credible nor effective. Some Western negotiators hoped that the bifurcation issue might at last be settled at Copenhagen.

But it wasn’t. In the event, developing countries refused to budge, insisting for example that developed countries’ historic responsibility for emissions was what mattered. As a result, the West was humiliatingly defeated, with the EU not even involved in the final negotiations between the US and the so-called BASIC countries (Brazil, South Africa, India and China).^xxviii

One commentator noted:

‘There was a clear victor. Equally clearly, there was a side that lost more comprehensively than at any international conference in modern history where the outcome had not been decided beforehand by force of arms.’ ^xxix

The Copenhagen failure was a major setback for the West.^xxx It was now established that, if the developing countries (including now powerful economies such as China, India, South Korea, Brazil, South Africa, Saudi Arabia and Iran) rejected a suggestion that their economic development be subject to emission control, that position would prevail. Yet by 2010 these countries were responsible for about 60% of global CO2 emissions ^xxxi; without them, major global emission cuts were clearly impossible.

The years following Copenhagen, from Cancún (COP16) in 2010 to Lima (COP20) in 2014, reinforced the West’s concerns as developing countries continued to insist they would not accept binding commitments to reduce their emissions.^xxxii

Paris 2015

It was becoming obvious that, if there was to be any prospect of emission reduction, there had to be some fresh thinking. So the UN proposed a new methodology for the summit scheduled for 2015 in Paris (COP21): instead of an overall global reduction requirement, a new approach should be implemented whereby countries would individually determine how they would reduce their emissions and that this would be coupled with a periodic review by which each country’s reduction plans would be steadily scaled up by a ‘ratcheting’ mechanism – a critically important development.

But, when countries’ plans (then described as ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs)) were submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat prior to Paris, it was clear that little had been achieved: hardly any developing countries had indicated any intention of making absolute emission cuts. Instead their INDCs spoke merely for example of reducing CO2 emission intensity in relation to GDP or of reducing the percentage of emissions from business-as-usual projections.^xxxiii

It had been hoped that NDCs (as they became known) would be the vehicle whereby major emerging (‘developing’) economies would at last make emission reduction commitments. Yet they turned out to be a problem that undermined the Paris Agreement – see below. And, in any case, other provisions of the Agreement in effect exempted developing countries from any obligation, moral, legal or political, to reduce their emissions.^xxxiv For example, the Agreement was described in its preamble as being pursuant to ‘the objective of the Convention [and] guided by its principles’ and further described in Article 2.1 as ‘enhancing the implementation of the Convention’. In other words, the developed/developing bifurcation remained intact and developing countries could continue to give overriding priority to economic development and poverty eradication. Moreover, under Article 4.4 of the Agreement, developing countries, in contrast to developed countries, were merely ‘encouraged to move over time towards economy-wide emission reduction or limitation targets’. Hardly an obligation to reduce their emissions.

It was not an outcome many wanted. For example, when ex UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was asked in early 2015 what he would expect to come out of the Paris summit, he replied:

‘Governments have to conclude a fair, universal and binding climate agreement, by which every country commits to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases.‘ ^xxxv

Western negotiators had intended that Paris should have a very different outcome from that achieved. Hence this 2014 statement by Ed Davey, then UK Secretary of State responsible for climate negotiations: ‘Next year in Paris in December … the world will come together to forge a deal on climate change that should, for the first time ever, include binding commitments to reduce emissions from all countries.’ ^xxxvi

But it didn’t happen. Developing country negotiators, led by China and India, ignored the West’s (in the event, feeble) demands. And Western negotiators, determined to avoid another Copenhagen-like debacle, didn’t press the issue. Hence the Paris agreement’s failure to achieve the West’s most basic aim: that powerful ‘emerging’ economies should be obliged to share in emission reduction.

The Stockholm Dilemma was still unresolved.

Might that change in the near future? Events since 2015 indicate that that’s most unlikely:

A major post-Paris example was a climate ‘action summit’ convened by UN Secretary General António Guterres for September 2019, calling for national plans to go carbon neutral by 2050 and new coal plants to be banned from 2020.^xxxvii But, just before the summit, the environment ministers of the so-called ‘BRICS’ countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) effectively undermined it by reaffirming their commitment to ‘the successful implementation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement’. In other words, these five countries (the source of about 45 percent of emissions) were indicating that they continued to regard themselves, under the UNFCCC and Paris framework, as exempt from any binding reduction obligation.^xxxviii As a result the summit was a failure.^xxxix

So it was not surprising that COP25 (December 2019 in Madrid) made no real progress: it ended with no substantive agreement on emission reduction and was widely described as another failure.^xl

Might that change – for example might major developing countries enhance their NDCs as required by the ‘ratchet’ provision of the Paris Agreement? The test would be the next UN conference (COP26) to be held in Glasgow in November 2021 – postponed from 2020 because of the COVID 19 crisis.^xli

But COP26 failed that test. And that was despite it being rated by the Guardian in July 2021 as ‘one of the most important climate summits ever staged’, despite Alok Sharma (COP26’s president) stressing that leaving ‘Glasgow with a clear plan to limit global warming to 1.5C’ would ‘set the course of this decisive decade for our planet and future generations’ and despite Prince Charles (as he then was) giving another of his familiar warnings: ‘Quite literally, it is the last chance saloon. We must now translate fine words into still finer actions.’ ^xlii

That things were not looking good became apparent when several major emitters (e.g. Brazil, China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Indonesia and Mexico) either failed to submit a new NDC in 2021 or submitted an updated NDC that was judged to lack any real increase in ambition, thereby failing to comply with the key Paris ‘ratchet’ requirement.^xliii Yet the countries referred to above were in 2019 the source of over 40% of global emissions.^xliv

COP26 itself got off to a bad start when China’s president Xi and Russia’s president Putin didn’t attend.^xlv And the proceedings included various upsets – in particular a formal request made by a group of 22 nations known at the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDC), which included China, India and Saudi Arabia, made on 11 November 2021, that the entire section on the mitigation of climate change be removed from the draft COP26 text.^xlvi It wasn’t wholly successful as COP26’s concluding text – the ‘Glasgow Climate Pact’ ^xlvii – did include an appeal for all countries to revisit and strengthen their 2030 emissions targets by the end of 2022. But that was essentially meaningless in practice as many major emitters had already failed to submit sufficiently strengthened NDCs (see above). In other words, COP26 ended with nothing of real importance being achieved.

All this confirmed yet again that developing countries, determined to grow their economies and improve the lives of their people, had no serous intention of cutting back on fossil fuels. But nonetheless the can was once again kicked down the road; this time to COP27 to be held in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt in 2022. And in the meantime events moved on much as before with most countries – even the US – increasing their reliance on fossil fuels (especially coal) and global CO2 emissions reaching their highest level ever.^xlviii

And it was hardly a surprise therefore when COP27 turned out to be yet another conference that essentially achieved nothing, with one reviewer noting that key mitigation items — such as a 2025 global emissions peak or a phase-out of all fossil fuels — were dropped under pressure from ‘Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and other petro-states’.^xlix Yet, far from giving up, the West now pinned its hopes on COP28 to be held in Dubai – the ‘first global stocktake’.

And the UN hoped that a ‘Climate Ambition Summit’ called by General Secretary António Guterres in September 2023 would boost the Conference’s prospects. But the absence of big emitters such as the US, China and India meant that the Summit turned out to be of little value.^l

However the COP28 ‘stocktake’ – otherwise unremarkable – did include what many commentators thought was an important breakthrough.^li In its paragraph 28, it said this:

‘The Conference of the Parties … calls on Parties to contribute to the following … Transitioning away from fossil fuels in energy systems, in a just, orderly and equitable manner, accelerating action in this critical decade, so as to achieve net zero by 2050 in keeping with the science.’

So, commentators said, there you have it: at long last we have an agreement (a ‘pledge’) to transition away from fossil fuels! But of course that wasn’t true. The reality was that Paragraph 28 also said that parties must ‘take account’ of the Paris Agreement and, as specifically confirmed further down in paragraph 38, the ‘stocktake’ reaffirmed Article 4.4 of that Agreement. In other words, developing countries, the source of 65% of global emissions, continued to be exempted from any obligation to cut their emissions.

Attention now moved to Baku, Azerbaijan – to COP29 held in November 2024. But this conference was concerned almost entirely with finance and made no serious progress on emission reduction. And in any case proceedings were overshadowed by Donald Trump’s re-election as US President – causing great uncertainty and concern about future global climate politics.

Such concern was justified: it was over 50 years since the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment and there was still no sign of a solution to the Stockholm Dilemma and now a resurgent Trump made one even less likely. Yet once again the circus moved on – this time to Belém in Brazil.

Belém 2025

In the months running up to COP30 its prospects already looked dismal, despite the conference being dubbed ‘the implementation COP’. This was because, despite the Paris Agreement requirement, hardly any significant countries submitted updated NDCs either by February 2025, or even by the extended date at the end of September.^lii To make matters even worse, few leaders of major economies turned up for the scheduled pre-COP leaders’ meeting: for example no one came from the United States, China, India, Russia, Indonesia, Japan, Saudi Arabia, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Türkiye or South Korea. Nonetheless Brazil’s President Lula announced that ‘COP30 will be the COP of truth’.^liii

However over 56,000 delegates did turn up at the conference – the third largest number at any COP. And Brazil’s environment minister Marina Silva urged countries to have the ‘courage’ to address a fossil-fuel phaseout, and to work towards a roadmap for ending dependence on fossil fuels.^liv It was a requirement echoed by about 80 countries which insisted via a letter to the COP President signed by 29 countries (including the UK, France, Spain and various small countries) that, unless the Conference outcome included a legally binding agreement to a ‘roadmap’ for a global transition away from fossil fuels, they would block the planned deal.^lv

Unsurprisingly however negotiators from the majority of countries – not just the Arab oil producers as some commentators suggested, but also major countries such as India, China, Indonesia and other developing countries whose economies and peoples’ welfare depend on fossil fuels – showed no interest in the idea and the COP President simply ignored it. Humiliatingly the objectors climbed down. And the words ‘fossil fuels’ were not even included in the finally agreed text.^lvi

This astute comment on the failure of COP30 was made by Li Shuo of the Asia Society (described as ‘a long-time observer of climate politics’):

‘This partly reflects the power shift in the real world, the emerging power of the BASIC and BRICs countries, and the decline of the European Union’.^lvii

So once again a COP made no progress at all towards meeting the UNFCCC’s 1992 call for the ‘stabilization of greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere’. It’s therefore hardly surprising that many commentators have queried whether there’s really any reason at all for continuing to hold all these huge and essentially pointless conferences.^lviii

And it’s not only the Belém debacle that illustrates this. Far from it: nothing that’s happening today justifies any realistic hope that fossil fuels are on their way out. For example, major developing countries, especially India, China and in Southeast Asia, are focusing on coal to bolster economic growth and upgrade national security.^lix And overall global emissions are still increasing. The early 2020 emission reductions caused by Covid 19 lockdowns were short-lived: as countries emerged from the pandemic determined to strengthen their economies, emission increases have continued.^lx

The harsh reality – confirmed time and time again – is that nothing has really changed since the West’s comprehensive defeat at COP15 in Copenhagen in 2009. The truth is that most countries do not share the West’s preoccupation with climate change. Nor is there any prospect of that view changing for the foreseeable future.

Conclusion

At the time of the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 the West’s emissions were 41 percent of the annual global total – today (without the US) they’re only 9 percent. Thus it’s clearly impossible for what’s left of the West to satisfy many scientists’ calls for an urgent and substantial (about 50%) global emission reduction. That can only happen if all the other major countries completely change their climate policies. And that’s obviously not going to happen.

Yet, despite that clear message from the past thirty or more years of climate negotiation history, it’s a key reality that’s still being overlooked by many in the West: in particular by net zero supporters; by the mainstream media; by many scientific publications; by all climate ‘activists’; by many respected academic and scientific organisations; by politicians, governmental and non-governmental organisations; and by celebrities and social media. And by the United Nations.

It’s quite remarkable that there are still so many Western observers who seem not to have noticed that, over the past fifty years, the nature of the climate debate has radically changed as a result of major global political and economic developments. What’s happened is that what was once the so-called Third World has for a long time been powerful enough to ignore the West and take charge of environmental negotiation – a process that started with the ‘Berlin Mandate’ at COP1 in 1994 (see above). And the increasingly meaningless distinction between the ‘developing’ world and the ‘developed’ world, introduced by the UN in 1992 as a way of persuading poorer countries to get involved in climate negotiation, has paradoxically become the reason why progress on GHG reduction has become virtually impossible.

It’s surely obvious by now that the Stockholm Dilemma will never be resolved. And that there’s nothing the West (or more accurately the EU, the UK, Australia and a few smaller countries) can do about it.

Notes and references

i See https://srv1.worldometers.info/world-population/population-by-region/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

ii See https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/report_2025?vis=ghgtot#emissions_table

iii See for example Fairfield Osborn’s book The Plundered Planet (1948), William Vogt’s Road to Survival (1948), Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (1962), the dire predictions in the Club of Rome report, Limits to Growth (1968) and, in particular, Barbara Ward’s report, Only One Earth (1972). Several of today’s environmentalists share the view that economic growth causes environmental degradation. See for example Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save The World (2021) by Jason Hickel.

iv Maurice Strong, a Canadian businessman-turned-diplomat, organised the Conference and was its Secretary General, having first commissioned Limits to Growth (see Note 3) that established much of its intellectual groundwork. He is widely seen as a pioneer of international environmental concern and of institutionalising it within the United Nations.

v At the time these countries were commonly referred to as ‘underdeveloped’ or, preferably, as ‘developing’. The ‘Third World’ was a standard label used for countries outside the Western or Soviet blocs.

vi Franz Fanon’s book The Wretched of the Earth (1961) was very influential in intellectual circles in the West at this time. Indian PM Indira Gandhi’s keynote speech at the Conference sets out the dilemma clearly: http://tiny.cc/dl6lqz. The speech is epitomised by this comment: ‘The environment cannot be improved in conditions of poverty.’

vii See Part One, chapter I (especially ‘proclamation’ 4) of this UN report on the conference: http://un-documents.net/aconf48-14r1.pdf.

viii See for example: https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/oil-shock-of-1978-79.

ix For Brundtland, see Our Common Future: http://www.un-documents.net/our-common-future.pdf.

x ibid – see paragraphs 27, 28 and 29 which do little to clarify the meaning of this rather vague concept.

xi Heralded in particular by James Hansen’s address the US Congress in 1988: https://www.sealevel.info/1988_Hansen_Senate_Testimony.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xii Described as the largest environmental conference ever held, the Summit’s outcome is outlined here: https://www.sustainable-environment.org.uk/Action/Earth_Summit.php

xiii For the full text of the UNFCCC see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/conveng.pdf

xiv See Note 1 above.

xv The omitted words are concerned with a different, but arguably equally important, issue: finance and technology transfer from developed to developing countries.

xvi See Article 4.2 (f) of the UNFCCC, under which parties might review ‘available information with a view to taking decisions regarding such amendments to the lists in Annexes I and II as may be appropriate, with the approval of the Party concerned’.

xvii See Article 2 (b) here: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/cop1/07a01.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xviii This report provides some interesting background re non-Annex I parties’ determination: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/1996/agbm/05.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xix See the Byrd-Hagel resolution adopted unanimously by the US Senate in June 1997: https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/senate-resolution/98/text It stated that the US would not sign a protocol putting limits on Annex I countries unless it imposed specific, timetabled commitments on non-Annex I countries.

xx For the text of the Kyoto Protocol see: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.pdf. Note in particular how Article 10’s provision that it did not introduce ‘any new commitments for Parties not included in Annex I’ ensured that developing countries were not bound by the Protocol’s emission reduction obligations.

xxi Note for example how China was responsible for an astonishing reduction in poverty from the 1980s to the early 2000s: https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/extreme-poverty-in-china-has-been-almost-eliminated-first-in-urban-then-in-rural-regions?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xxii See Note 1 above.

xxiii See for example: https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar4/syr/

xxiv The Bali Action Plan can be seen here: https://www.preventionweb.net/files/8376_BaliE.pdf?startDownload=true

xxv See the UN Secretary-General’s extraordinary speech in Copenhagen just before COP15: https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/cop_15/statements/application/pdf/speech_opening_hls_cop15_ban_ki_moon.pdf

xxvi The full extract: ‘If we do not reach a deal at this time, let us be in no doubt: once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice. By then it will be irretrievably too late.’ See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/oct/19/gordon-brown-copenhagen-climate-talks

xxvii In particular those confirmed by section 1(b)(i) of the Bali Action Plan – see Note 24 above.

xxviii See this overall review of the outcome: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8426835.stm.

xxix Rupert Darwall: The Age of Global Warming, 310

xxx The ‘Copenhagen Accord’ was an attempt by some countries to rescue something from this debacle: https://unfccc.int/resource/docs/2009/cop15/eng/l07.pdf. A non-binding document (the Conference only ‘took note’ of it) it stated for example that global temperature should not rise more than 2ºC above pre-industrial levels – although it didn’t specify a date for this.

xxxi See Note 1 above.

xxxii See for example this report on the 2014 conference in Lima: http://tiny.cc/w4zv001

xxxiii For example, China’s INDC said only that it planned to ‘achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030’ (no mention of the level of such ‘peak’ or of what will happen thereafter) and to ‘lower carbon dioxide emissions per unit of GDP by 60% to 65% from the 2005 level’. And South Korea merely said that it ‘plans to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 37% from the business-as-usual (BAU,850.6 MtCO2eq) level by 2030 across all economic sectors’, i.e. emissions will continue to increase but not by as much as they might have done.

Note that ‘Intended Nationally Determined Contributions’ (INDCs) are referred to as ‘Nationally Determined Contributions’ (NDCs) in Articles 3 and 4 of in the Paris Agreement – see Note 34 below. All NDCs submitted to the UNFCCC secretariat can be found here: https://unfccc.int/NDCREG

xxxiv The full text of the Paris Agreement can be found here: https://unfccc.int/files/meetings/paris_nov_2015/application/pdf/paris_agreement_english_.pdf

xxxv From an interview with the Observer in May 2025. Annan’s other comments are also interesting: https://www.kofiannanfoundation.org/publication/we-must-challenge-climate-change-sceptics/

xxxvi See the Ministerial Forward here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/360596/hmg_paris_2015.pdf

xxxvii https://climateaction.unfccc.int/Events/ClimateActionSummit

xxxviii My note was an extract from a press release by the PRC’s Ministry of Ecology and Environment: https://english.mee.gov.cn/News_service/news_release/201908/t20190829_730517.shtml?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xxxix https://populationmatters.org/news/2019/09/un-climate-action-summit-fails-to-deliver-climate-action/

xl http://tiny.cc/zg0w001 The official summary noted how countries such as China — speaking for the bloc including Brazil, India, South Africa — repeatedly called for developed countries to meet financial commitments: http://tiny.cc/3h0w001

xli https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-climatechange-idUSKBN21J6QC/

xlii http://tiny.cc/js1w001, http://tiny.cc/dv1w001 and http://tiny.cc/zs1w001

xliii https://ca1-clm.edcdn.com/assets/brief_-_countries_with_no_or_insignificant_ndc_updates_2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xliv See Note 1 above.

xlv http://tiny.cc/w22w001 and http://tiny.cc/w22w001

xlvi https://kyma.com/cnn-world/2021/11/11/china-and-india-among-22-nations-calling-for-key-section-on-emissions-be-ditched-from-cop26-agreement/?utm_source=chatgpt.com

xlvii The Glasgow Climate Pact can be found here: https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cop26_auv_2f_cover_decision.pdf

xlviii See Note 1 above.

xlix See observations here: http://tiny.cc/q52w001

l The Guardian’s view: http://tiny.cc/872w001

li https://unfccc.int/sites/default/files/resource/cma2023_L17_adv.pdf

lii https://unfccc.int/NDCREG