Environment GapFill

Another key area of institutional global governance is on matters relating to the environment. Two key institutions are involved in the process of tackling climate change and environmental degradation. The first, the  World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA)United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body that assesses research, provides information and produces policy options for discussion. It is widely regarded as the global authority on the subject. The second is the  Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF)United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), an international treaty agreed upon in 1992 which set non legally binding limits on greenhouse gas emissions and provided a structure in which nation states have subsequently met annually to discuss and negotiate methods of, and targets for, emissions reduction. 

Alongside emissions reductions, the environmental process at the United Nations aims to tackle other areas of widespread environmental degradation, such as deforestation, biodiversity loss and desalination of the oceans. A number of key summits have provided landmark moments in the process, such as the signing of the initial convention on climate change at the  2017 Bonn1992 Rio2015 Paris2005 Montreal Summit, and the commitment to reducing global temperature rises to no more than 1.5 degrees at the   2017 Bonn2015 Paris2005 Montreal1992 Rio Summit.

While this process has been successful at involving virtually every country on earth, it has met with limitations. Perhaps the most common criticism of the process is that negotiations have failed to produce clear   climate sciencehistoric emissionsgreen growthlegally binding limits on the extent to which nation states can continue to emit greenhouse gases. Another key sticking point in negotiations has been the recognition of  green growthhistoric emissionslegally binding limitssustainable development in the Global North, and the extent to which compensation is required to make up for the inability of developing nations in the Global South to industrialise without limits on their emissions. Finally, the rise of  sustainable developmentgreen growthhistoric emissionsclimate scepticism is regarded as having undermined the process by creating doubt among sections of civil society in relation to   green growthsustainable developmentlegally binding limitsclimate science. This is evident from the United States's withdrawal from the 2015 Paris agreement under the presidency of Donald Trump, despite the USA being the world's second largest contributor of carbon emissions.