What is the relationship between the Kyoto Protocol, the UNFCCC, and the IPCC?
A frightening morass of counter-intuitive acronyms is likely to discourage even the most determined of interested citizens, in their quest to understand the workings of global climate change politics. What relationship does the IPCC (WGI, II, II, the TSU etc) have to the UNFCCC (CC…CC), the COP/MOP process, and the Kyoto Protocol? Fortunately, there is some underlying logic (shocking, truly) to this system, which can be grasped even by the uninitiated. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) entered into force in 1994, and provides an overall policy framework for addressing the climate change issue. This convention was agreed upon in the General Assembly of the United Nations, as the result of negotiation and voting by UN member states. The parties to the UNFCCC meet periodically at meetings called Conferences/Meetings of the Parties (COP/MOP). It is during these meetings that policies such as the Kyoto Protocol have been developed, and the assessment reports
