The Kyoto Protocol, the first climate treaty with binding emission targets, was adopted at which Conference of the Parties?

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 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.