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Pallemaerts, Marc; Williams, Rhiannon --- "Climate Change: The International and European Policy Framework" [2006] ELECD 426; in Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt (eds), "EU Climate Change Policy" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2006)

Book Title: EU Climate Change Policy

Editor(s): Peeters, Marjan; Deketelaere, Kurt

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845426057

Section: Chapter 2

Section Title: Climate Change: The International and European Policy Framework

Author(s): Pallemaerts, Marc; Williams, Rhiannon

Number of pages: 29

Extract:

2. Climate change: the international and
European policy framework
Marc Pallemaerts1 and Rhiannon Williams2

1. tHE ProCEss oF rEGimE DEvEloPmENt
1.1 The Early Scientific and Political Debate in the 1970s and 1980s

the first scientific hypotheses suggesting that the concentration of carbon di-
oxide (Co2) in the atmosphere might lead to global warming date from the end
of the nineteenth century. the first systematic measurements of the average at-
mospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, confirming its increase, were made
from the late 1950s. meeting in stockholm in June 1972, the United Nations
(UN) Conference on the Human Environment adopted an action plan recom-
mending, inter alia, the establishment of a network of stations to measure
atmospheric pollution with a view to studying, over the long term, atmospheric
variations likely to cause climate change.3 in Geneva, in 1979, the first world
Climate Conference, was organized by the world meteorological organization
(wmo), which led to the launch, one year later, of the world Climate research
Programme (wCrP), co-ordinated by the wmo and the international Council
of scientific Unions (iCsU). the United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) became involved with the work of the wCrP as a result of its work on
environmental assessment. Nevertheless, in the early 1980s, the attention of
UNEP and the policy makers was focused on the question of the protection of
the ozone layer, climate change being seen as a more hypothetical problem, on
which there was no scientific consensus. it was only from 1985 that ...