The conference represents the next round of United Nations UN negotiations on how to tackle climate change. World politics is currently facing several serious events, including wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. At the same time, we have no choice but to continue working together to find solutions for the future of our planet. For a better understanding of the upcoming climate change negotiations, it is worth taking a look at the history of the UN's environmental milestones.
Since , almost every member nation on Earth has come together in a different country each year, with the exception of For a long time, environmental issues like climate change and global warming were not a major concern of the international community or the UN.
However, in the late s and early s, a growing environmental consciousness emerged. In , 23 years after its foundation, the UN organised its first international Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, Sweden.
Known as the first Earth Summit, this conference adopted a declaration that set out 26 principles for the preservation and enhancement of the human environment, agreed upon an action plan containing recommendations, and founded the UN Environment Programme UNEP.
Since then, the environment has slowly crept up the international agenda. Its first assessment report on climate change was released in , and the first meeting of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee INC was held a year later. Nevertheless, it took more than 20 years for the international community to commit to action, at the Earth Summit in in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The resulting UNFCCC entered into force two years later, providing a framework for ongoing climate negotiations in the form of preparatory conferences and the annual COP.
