Print

Share This

Email

Send to a Friend

Please fill out this form. We will email the link to this page to your friend right away. All fields marked are required.
Your First Name: Your Last Name:   Your Email:   Your Friend's Email: Yes, I would like to receive National Wildlife Federation emails.	Your Personal Message:

International Climate Accord

“We underline that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time."

(Copenhagen Accord, 18 December 2009)

While the United States should be a leader in confronting global warming, no one nation can solve this challenge alone.

Achieving a comprehensive, internationally binding treaty under the auspices of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) is essential if our planet is to avoid the dangerous consequences of run-away climate change. This international treaty must commit countries to deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions such that a peak in global warming pollution will occur within this decade.

NWF works with environmental organizations around the world to push for the adoption of an international agreement under which nations cooperate to avoid dangerous climate change.

In December of 2009, NWF sent a delegation to the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP) of the UNFCCC in Copenhagen, Denmark to represent the views of our diverse members and supporters and to advocate for international solutions to climate change.

The Copenhagen Accord is the ‘political agreement’ that resulted from an intense and unprecedented series of negotiations involving heads of state.  Negotiated on 18 December 2009, this voluntary international agreement calls for all nations to reduce emissions and make new investments in clean energy technologies and practices, and calls on developed countries to provide assistance to developing nations in adapting to the effects of climate change.

For up-to-date information on respective country commitments to the Copenhagen Accord, visit the UNFCCC web site.

Summary of the Copenhagen Accord

Although not a legally binding treaty, this international voluntary agreement:

• Recognizes the need to prevent global temperatures from exceeding 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels;

• Captures the significant actions taken by all key countries to reduce their emissions through reports to the United Nations and monitors these climate mitigation efforts by including new transparency requirements;

• Proposes reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation as an essential climate change mitigation mechanism;

• Calls for U.S. $30 billion for the 2010-2012 period to jump-start efforts in the developing world to mitigate emissions and adapt to climate change impacts;

• Sets a goal of allocating U.S. $100 billion per year from a variety of sources by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in adapting to climate impacts, preventing deforestation, and adopting clean energy technologies.

The legal status of this Accord remains unclear and further efforts to correlate this political agreement with the negotiations underway since the 2007 COP held in Bali are necessary to lead the world to a new consensus at the next Conference of the Parties in Mexico in December 2010.

The United States has a major contribution to make. NWF applauds President Obama's personal leadership in Copenhagen, but recognizes that the U.S. can and must solidify its current conditional pledge to help achieve international climate change mitigation targets.