Environment & Ecology Quiz: UN Climate Change Conferences (COP) and Their Outcomes

The correct answer is B, the Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, held in June 1992 and popularly called the Earth Summit, opened three agreements for signature: the climate convention, the Convention on Biological Diversity and Agenda 21. The climate convention entered into force on 21 March 1994, and its annual Conference of the Parties began at Berlin in 1995. A, the Stockholm Conference of 1972, was the first world environment meeting and gave rise to the United Nations Environment Programme, twenty years before the climate convention. C, the Johannesburg summit of 2002, reviewed the Rio commitments but opened no new convention. D produced the Montreal Protocol, which deals with ozone depleting substances and not with greenhouse gas targets.

The correct answer is B, COP3 at Kyoto. The protocol was adopted on 11 December 1997 in the Japanese city that gave it its name, and it entered into force on 16 February 2005 once countries accounting for the required share of Annex I emissions had ratified it. Annex I countries accepted an average cut of about five per cent below 1990 levels for the period 2008 to 2012. A, COP1 at Berlin in 1995, only adopted the Berlin Mandate, the decision to begin negotiating such targets. C, COP8 at New Delhi in 2002, adopted the Delhi Declaration linking climate action to development. D, COP13 at Bali in 2007, gave the Bali Action Plan, which started the talks that ended in the Paris Agreement. Remember the pair Kyoto 1997 for adoption and 2005 for entry into force, since both years are asked.

The correct answer is C, the Clean Development Mechanism. Under it a country with a Kyoto target financed a project such as a wind farm, a biomass plant or a more efficient kiln in a developing country, and the emissions avoided were issued to it as certified emission reductions that counted towards its own target, while the host country received investment and technology. A, joint implementation, worked the same way but only between two developed countries with targets, so the project had to be in another Annex I country. B, emissions trading, was the simple purchase of surplus assigned amount units from a country that had overachieved, with no project involved. D belongs to the Paris Agreement, where it is a five-yearly review of collective progress and not a credit-earning mechanism at all.

The correct answer is C, COP21, held at Paris, where the agreement was adopted on 12 December 2015 and opened for signature in April 2016; it entered into force on 4 November 2016. Its central feature is the nationally determined contribution, written by each country itself and revised every five years, together with the goal of holding warming well below two degrees Celsius. A, COP19 at Warsaw in 2013, created the international mechanism for loss and damage. B, COP20 at Lima in 2014, produced the Lima Call for Climate Action and invited countries to submit intended contributions, which is why it is the favourite distractor here. D, COP24 at Katowice in 2018, agreed on the rulebook for implementing the agreement adopted three years earlier. The agreement is therefore always tied to Paris and to the year 2015 in exam options.

The correct answer is B, COP16 at Cancun in 2010, with headquarters at Songdo in the Republic of Korea. Copenhagen in 2009 had produced the political pledge of a hundred billion dollars a year by 2020, and the Cancun decisions of the following year created the institution to channel that money, along with the Cancun Adaptation Framework. A names the right pledge but the wrong conference and city. C is wrong on both counts, since Bonn hosts the convention secretariat rather than the fund, and Paris created no new fund. D is invented; Glasgow in 2021 gave the Glasgow Climate Pact and the call to phase down unabated coal, while Nairobi is the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme. Fix the pair in memory as Cancun for the decision and Songdo for the office of the fund.

The correct answer is A, loss and damage from climate impacts. Loss and damage is the third pillar of climate policy, after mitigation and adaptation, and covers harm that can no longer be prevented: land lost to the sea, a crop destroyed by an extreme event, an island made uninhabitable. Small island states had demanded an institution for it for years, and the Warsaw mechanism of 2013 was the first. A dedicated fund was agreed at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2022 and set up at Dubai in 2023. B is handled by the Kyoto mechanisms and by Article 6 of the Paris Agreement. C belongs to REDD-plus and to forest certification bodies outside the convention. D is the business of the Montreal Protocol, a separate treaty on the ozone layer.

The correct answer is A, Article 3 of the UNFCCC of 1992. The article directs parties to protect the climate system on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and adds that the developed country parties should take the lead. India and other developing countries rely on it to resist a single uniform obligation for all. B deals with the phasing out of chlorofluorocarbons and other ozone depleting substances and uses a different form of differentiation through grace periods. C is the treaty on the conservation of wetlands, signed in the Iranian city of Ramsar. D is a declaration of broad environmental principles that predates the climate convention and does not contain this formulation. The phrase equity and CBDR-RC in a question stem almost always points to the climate convention.

The correct answer is C, 2070. Panchamrit, the five nectar elements announced by India at COP26, consists of five hundred gigawatts of non-fossil energy capacity by 2030, meeting half of the country's energy requirement from renewable sources by 2030, reducing projected emissions by one billion tonnes by 2030, reducing the emissions intensity of the economy by forty-five per cent from the 2005 level by 2030, and achieving net zero emissions by 2070. A is the year many developed countries and the European Union have adopted, and it is offered to mislead. B is the year announced by China, which candidates often transfer to India. D appears in no commitment. India argued that a later date is consistent with equity, since its per capita emissions and its historical share are both low.

The correct answer is C, every five years. The agreement works on a five-year ambition cycle: parties submit nationally determined contributions, implement them, and then the stocktake assesses where the world stands on mitigation, adaptation and the means of implementation, so that the next round of contributions can be stronger. The first stocktake concluded at COP28 in Dubai in 2023 and found the world off track for the one and a half degree limit. A is the frequency of the Conference of the Parties itself, which is the trap in this question. B matches the biennial transparency reporting cycle more closely than the stocktake. D is the interval of no process under the agreement, and would defeat the purpose of ratcheting ambition. Note that the conference meets yearly while the stocktake arrives only once in five of those meetings.

The correct answer is A, the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. The panel was created in 1988, four years before the climate convention existed, which is why B is wrong: the IPCC is not an organ of the convention, although its reports set the agenda for every conference and the first assessment report of 1990 led directly to the negotiation of the convention. The panel does no research of its own; it assesses published science through working groups on physical science, impacts and mitigation, and it shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 with Al Gore. C has no role in climate science. D are financial institutions, and while the World Bank hosts climate funds it did not create the panel.