COP7—Marrakesh Climate Conference

From 29th October to 9th November, 2001, governments met in Marrakesh, Morocco, for the 7th Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP7). The purpose of the meeting was to agree legal text covering outstanding technical aspects of the political agreement reached in Bonn in July 2001 on how to implement the Kyoto Protocol.

While the U.S. were not there, as they had pulled out of the talks earlier in 2001, an agreement did result in Bonn, which was though, criticized for being watered down from the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (which itself was a watered down treaty.)

The COP7 meeting ended with agreement on how to enforce the Kyoto accord on tackling climate change. As the previous link reports, there were some further concessions to be made due to "co-ordinated obstruction" by nations such as Japan, Canada and Russia that wanted things like carbon sinks to be accounted.

The treaty has to be ratified by 55 countries, responsible for 55 per cent of emissions. However, there are some concerns that there will be little impact on emissions as a result.

Due to the so-called "war on terror" and the absence of the U.S. this meeting seems to have hardly been mentioned in the mainstream media compared to previous COP meetings.