Global framework
Updated national and international framework on climate change action
EquiClimate is a creative business response to the European Union’s central action on climate change – the Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS).
The EU commission’s president, Jose Manuel Barroso, stated in January 2008 that European governments are now leading the way internationally with their package of plans to make Europe ‘the first economy for the low-carbon age’. The ETS is central to the EU’s policies to combat climate change.
EquiClimate enables anybody and everybody to play a tiny part in the international action, by buying into and influencing the EU Emissions Trading Scheme.
The UK’s part in world action on climate change
Climate change is a global problem that will only be effectively challenged by all the countries of the world working together.
The UK has been taking a leading role in the international processes seeking to achieve agreement on coordinated world action to tackle climate change. The UK participates through the European Union, the G8 and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
The EU’s overall target is to see levels of greenhouse gases stabilised so that we avoid the worst potential effects of climate change – while adapting to changes that are already unavoidable. To achieve the first part of this, leaders believe global warming must be restrained to no more than 2°C increase above the average temperatures of pre-industrial times.
The international community is currently working towards a global agreement for an effective, durable framework for ongoing action on climate change after 2012, when the initial targets agreed under the Kyoto Protocol expire. (The Kyoto Agreement was made in 1997, and came into force in 2005).
The UN Bali Climate Change Conference in December 2007, and the resulting ‘roadmap’, was a further step towards a comprehensive worldwide agreement. Work on this agreement is to be concluded in 2009 at the UN Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen.