Climate change agreement: from Kyoto to Doha and beyond

December's climate change conference in Paris aims to come up with an international agreement to help limit global warming after 2020, but it is far from the first one. MEPs are this week voting on a recommendation to ensure that the Doha climate agreement, setting targets for emissions reductions up to 2020, is still ratified by the end of the year. Read on to find out more about the first climate change agreements and the efforts to come up with a new global deal to help fight global warming.

Kyoto Protocol

The 1992 United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change sought to slow down the increase in global temperatures, but by 1995 it was clear that it was inadequate. As a result the world's nations launched negotiations to strengthen the global response to climate change and in 1997 adopted the Kyoto Protocol, which initially only contained binding targets for emissions reductions until 2012.

Doha amendment

After the Copenhagen climate summit of 2009 failed to come up with a new deal everyone could agree with, the Doha amendment to the Kyoto protocol was adopted in 2012. This introduced a "second commitment" period from 2013 to 2020 with new emission commitments that were at least equally ambitious as those under the first period. It legally binds developed countries to emission reduction targets of at least 18% below 1990 levels by 2020.

Italian EPP member  Elisabetta Gardini wrote the recommendation on the Doha agreement MEPs are voting on this week, which calls on member states to ratify the text as soon as possible. She said that the Doha deal is mainly supported by EU countries and that member states are already implementing a 20% emissions reduction by 2020.

New agreement

As the Doha amendment only includes targets up until 2020, the search has been on for a new international agreement to succeed it. In December 2014, experts, specialists and parliamentarians met in Lima to negotiate a text to succeed the Kyoto protocol.  The European Parliament participated in the Lima conference with a delegation of 12 MEPs.

Further talks take place during the climate change conference in Bonn on 1-11 June. During the G7 Summit in Bavaria, participating leaders also discussed climate change.

The goal  of December's climate conference in Paris is to agree the final text and then to implement it from 2020.

Infochart

Check our infochart above to see how global CO2 emissions have evolved over time.

The debate on climate change takes place on Tuesday 9 June and the vote the next day. Watch it live on our website.

Click here for more news from the European Parliament.

Find out more

• (open in a new tab) Climate change top story
• (open in a new tab) United Nations: Framework Convention on Climate Change
• (open in a new tab) European Commission: climate action
• (open in a new tab) Recommendation on the Doha Amendment to the Kyoto Protocol
• (open in a new tab) Recommendation concerning Iceland's participation in the second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol