The Framework Convention on Climate Change, signed by 154 heads of State and governments at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, is a path-breaking document. It represents one of the first instances in which national governments have signalled their intention to control widespread and economically important activities at such a scale in order to reduce a well-documented but incompletely understood set of risks to the global environment. The treaty is likely to be an important model for future international agreements in many areas.

The negotiations that led to the signing of this Convention were remarkably brief and have been generally unmarred by the traditional, partisan attacks which have disrupted many UN negotiations in the past. This pattern of success on such a complex issue suggests that the climate negotiations may offer some significant lessons for both those who seek to make further progress in reducing the risks of rapid climate change and those who are now designing and implementing international environmental negotiations on other issues.

This book offers fascinating insights into the structure and dynamics of the climate negotiations. It reflects the perceptions of central participants in these negotiations, individuals who were participants in the key decisions, framed the most important initiatives, and represented the pivotal constituencies in the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee (INC). The considered reflections they offer here represent a series of diverse visions of a world attempting to anticipate and deal with a potentially far reaching agent of long-term environmental change.