Climate Change and Health and Well-Being: A Policy Primer

Annex 1: Summary and Chronology of Key International Climate Change Events

The Road to Kyoto and Beyond (A timeline of scientific research and conferences that led to the Kyoto Protocol)

• 1896 Svante Arrhenius, a Swedish chemist, predicts carbon dioxide emissions from burning of coal will lead to global warming.
• 1957 Revelle and Seuss, scientists with the Scripps Institute of Oceanography, report that much of the CO² emitted into the atmosphere by industrial activities is not absorbed by the oceans, as some researchers had proposed. They described the build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as "a large-scale geophysical experiment" with the earth';s climate.
• 1958 Keeling, a scientist with the Scripps Institute, initiates the first reliable and continuous measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide at Hawaii';s Mauna Loa Observatory.
• 1972 Stockholm: first U.N. Conference on the Human Environment where human induced climate change was identified as a pressing issue. The United Nations Environment Programme founded.
• 1979 Geneva: first World Climate Conference: launched the World Climate Program to coordinate global research on climate and climate change and collect meteorological and related oceanographic and hydrologic data.
• 1985 Villach (Austria) Conference: issued a warning that "Many important economic decisions are based on the assumption that past climate is a reliable guide to the future. This is no longer a good assumption."
• 1988 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), made up of the world';s leading climate scientists, is established by the U.N. Environment Programme and the World Meteorological Organization to assess the scientific research on climate change and its environmental impacts and remedial measures.
• 1988 Toronto: The Conference on the Changing Atmosphere calls for a 20 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.
• 1990 Geneva: First assessment report of the IPCC is endorsed at the Second World Climate Conference by more than 500 scientists and world leaders. A call is issued for an international agreement to mitigate global warming.
• 1992 Rio de Janeiro: One of the results of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) was that 154 nations signed the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, voluntarily agreeing to stabilize greenhouse gas emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2000.
• 1995 The IPCC, representing the consensus of the world';s climate scientists, concludes that "...the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate." It also concludes that the net benefits of greenhouse gas mitigation exceed the costs in many countries at least for the initial reductions.
• 1997 Warmest year on record since scientists began keeping accurate meteorological logs in 1860. The next two warmest years are also in the same decade: 1995, 1990.
• 1997 Kyoto, Japan: 159 nations negotiate a protocol to the UNFCCC setting out legally binding reduction targets for six greenhouse gases averaging 5.2% below 1990 levels for industrialized countries by 2008 - 2012.
• 1998 Measurements indicate that 1998 is the warmest year on record in Canada and globally, even warmer than 1997.
• 1998 Parties to the UNFCCC in Buenos Aires agree to a plan to work towards the goals of Kyoto.
• 2000 Canadian Federal Government announces its Action Plan 2000 on Climate Change.
• 2001 Kyoto Agreement reached in Bonn, Germany.