The Role of Regional Organizations in the Context of Climate Change

Angebote / Angebote:

The past two decades have seen a remarkable broadening of interest in global warming from a research concern on the part of a limited number of scientists to a political problem on a worldwide scale. The nature of this transformation would itself be a fruitful study for a mixed team of social scientists and natural scientists. It would be valuable to assess the differing nature of the staging posts along this road: the First World Climate Conference in 1979, which was a meeting of scientists talking to scientists, the Villach Assessment of 1985, which was a meeting of scientists whose report was given attention by the policy advisers of a number of governments, the Second World Climate Conference of 1990, which consisted of a scientific meeting followed by a Ministerial Meeting, and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change of 1992 signed by 158 countries at the UN Conference on Environment and Development in June 1992. The present publication is a welcome contribution of the followup to UNCED. By focusing on a specific problem, it avoids the pitfall of undue generalization and provides the basis for fruitful discussion between natural scientists, social scientists, and policymakers. To choose as the area of concentration a particular scale also helped to produce meaningful discussion likely to lead to action.