ABSTRACT
The years 1989 to 1992 marked a period of reinvention in global climate governance, as the Group of Seven (G7) retreated in favour of the new divided, development-first regime of the United Nations. G7 summit attention and action on climate change mutually spiked to new highs that would not be surpassed on a sustained basis until the Gleneagles Summit in 2005. The 1989 Paris Summit in particular saw a notable rise in both the volume and scope of climate deliberations, devoting one third of its final declaration to global environmental concerns. This trend continued, albeit to a lesser extent, at the US-hosted 1990 Houston Summit, where the G7 recognized, identified, prioritized, and defined the parameters for UN-led international action on climate change and arrived at interim agreements that would ultimately bring the new UN-embedded framework to life. In 1991 at London, the G7 summit focused specifically on the forthcoming UN Earth Summit scheduled for June 1992 in Rio de Janeiro, galvanizing collective leadership and support for ensuring the successful completion of a climate change convention by that time. In 1992, just three weeks after the Earth Summit, G7 leaders in Munich took firm responsibility for the effects of global warming and recognized that specific, concrete actions were needed to reduce the irreversible effects of greenhouse gas emissions in the earth’s atmosphere. From 1989 to 1992, summit leaders made 23 climate-related commitments, compared to only two in the years before.
