Woods Hole Research Center

A central component of the mission of the Woods Hole Research Center is informing environmental decision-makers and stakeholders with sound scientific research and data regarding key environmental issues. Center staff have been involved in international discussions about climate change since its inception and were responsible for organizing international meetings on climate change as early as 1987. The Center participated in the drafting of the first and subsequent IPCC assessment reports as well as the treaty adopted at the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, which evolved into the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

Under the UNFCCC, the Center played an active role in the development of the Kyoto Protocol, which was adopted at the third Conference of the Parties (COP). The Center’s work at the fourth through eighth COPs focused on effective implementation of the various rules and mechanisms associated with the Protocol. Even as the final details of the Kyoto Protocol were being negotiated, the Center began to turn its focus to another facet of the climate change mitigation discussion—how to help developing countries slow their rates of tropical deforestation and thus reduce the magnitude of carbon emissions resulting from forest loss and land use change. The concept of compensating developing countries for reducing their emissions from deforestation was introduced to the UNFCCC process by the Center, the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM), and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) at COP 9 in Milan, Italy. In the ensuing years, the idea of compensated reductions has evolved into a mechanism for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) that has become one of the focal points of a post-Kyoto Protocol climate agreement. The Center is committed to working with collaborators, other non-profit institutions and research organizations, governments, and other stakeholders to forward international climate change negotiations through the United Nations process.

The index at right provides a summary of the Center’s work related to specific UNFCCC Conference of the Parties (COPs).