HONOLULU, United States, Jan. 31 (Xinhua) -- Representatives from the United Nations, the European Union as well as 16 major economies are attending a two-day closed-door conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, known as the Major Economics Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change.

The conference is aimed at building on guidelines forged last month at a United Nations summit in Bali, Indonesia, for concluding a treaty by the end of 2009 on cutting global greenhouse gas emissions.

The following are some major concepts related to the meeting and the global issue of climate change.

CLIMATE CHANGE

Climate refers to the average weather experienced over a long period. This includes temperature, wind and rainfall patterns. The climate of the Earth is not static, and has changed many times in response to a variety of natural causes.

The earth has warmed by 0.74 Celsius over the last hundred years. Around 0.4 Celsius of this warming has occurred since the 1970s.

The recent Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that human activity is the primary driver of the observed changes in climate.

The main human influence on global climate is emissions of the key greenhouse gases -- carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The accumulation of these gases in the atmosphere strengthens the greenhouse effect.

GREENHOUSE GAS EMISSIONS

Greenhouse gases are components of the atmosphere that contribute to the greenhouse effect. Without the greenhouse effect the Earth would be uninhabitable.

Greenhouse gases include in the order of relative abundance water vapour, carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, and ozone. Greenhouse gases come from natural sources and human activity.

Measurement from Antarctic ice cores show that just before industrial emissions started, atmospheric CO2 levels were about 280 parts per million by volume (ppm).

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the concentrations of many of the greenhouse gases have increased. The concentration of CO2 has increased by about 100 ppm to 380 ppm). The first 50 ppm increase took place in about 200 years, from the start of the Industrial Revolution to around 1973; the next 50 ppm increase took place in about 33 years, from 1973 to 2006.

UN FRAMEWORK

Also known as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC or FCCC), it is an international environmental treaty produced at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), informally known as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. The treaty is aimed at reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in order to combat global warming.

The treaty as originally framed set no mandatory limits on greenhouse gas emissions for individual nations and contained no enforcement provisions; it is therefore considered legally non-binding.

Rather, the treaty included provisions for updates (called "protocols") that would set mandatory emission limits. The principal update is the Kyoto Protocol, which has become much better known than the UNFCCC itself.

One of its first achievements was to establish a national greenhouse gas inventory, as a count of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and removals. Accounts must be regularly submitted by signatories of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

The UNFCCC is also the name of the United Nations Secretariat charged with supporting the operation of the Convention, with offices in Haus Carstanjen, Bonn, Germany. Since 2006 the head of the secretariat has been Yvo de Boer.

THE KYOTO PROTOCOL

It is a protocol to the international Framework Convention on Climate Change with the objective of reducing Greenhouse gases that cause climate change. It was agreed on 11 December 1997 at the 3rd Conference of the Parties to the treaty when they met in Kyoto, and entered into force on 16 February 2005.

As of November 2007, 174 parties have ratified the protocol, under which 36 industrialized countries and the European community have been committed to reducing their emissions by an average of 5percent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.

The United States is the only industrialized nation which stays out of the protocol.

The three Kyoto mechanisms are: Emissions Trading known as "the carbon market," the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Joint Implementation (JI). The carbon market spawned by these mechanisms is a key tool in reducing emissions worldwide. It was worth 30 billion U.S. dollars in 2006 and is set to increase.

BALI ROADMAP

After the 2007 United Nations Climate Change Conference on the island Bali in Indonesia in December, 2007, the participating nations adopted the Bali roadmap as a two-year process toward finalizing a binding agreement in 2009 in Denmark, which will replace the Kyoto protocol when it expires in 2012.

Work on the Bali roadmap will begin as soon as possible. Four major UNFCCC meetings to implement the Bali Roadmap are planned for 2008, with the first to be held in either March or April and the second in June, with the third in either August or September followed by a major meeting in Poznan, Poland in December 2008. The negotiations process is scheduled to conclude in 2009 at a major summit in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Major Economies Meeting (MEM)

Known as the "Major economies meeting on energy security and climate change", the process was initiated by U.S. President Goerge W. Bush in May 2007, when the United States was under growing pressure to contribute more to solving the problem of greenhouse-gas emissions.

Although the Bush administration has repeatedly said the MEM is simply to supplement the U.N. process, there are suspicions that it is intended to sidetrack the U.N. climate talks and push forward its own agenda on the issue, which the U.S. government denies.

It said the meeting is aimed to advance the U.N. agenda and feed new ideas to climate change negotiation process under the U.N. framework and serve as a "subcommittee" to the UN framework.

First MEM was held in Washington last September and the Hawaii meeting is the second in the series.

Cap and Trade:

Aslo known as emissions trading, it is an administrative approach approved in the Kyoto Protocol, aimed to control pollution by providing economic incentives for achieving reductions in the emissions of pollutants, which is sometimes seen as better approach than a direct carbon tax or direct regulation.

Under the system, countries are permitted to use a trading system to help meet their emissions targets. In principle, a country may allocate permits to individual companies for the emission of a certain quantity of greenhouse gases.

If permits are only issued to a level equal to or below the assigned amount, then a country should meet its Kyoto commitment (assuming that the measures of its emissions are accurate).

If a country is incapable of meeting its target, it can buy permits from countries that are under their targets. Similarly, companies within a country that prove more able to reduce their emissions are allowed to trade excess permits to other, more polluting, enterprises.

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM)

It is the entry point for developing countries (non-Annex I) into the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change. The mechanism was established under Article 12 of the Kyoto Protocol adopted by the Third Conference of the Parties to the UNFCCC on Dec. 11, 1997.

The dual goals of the CDM are to promote sustainable development in developing countries, and to allow industrialized countries to earn emissions credits from their investments in emission-reducing projects in developing countries. To earn credits under the CDM, the project proponent must prove and have verified that the greenhouse gas emissions reductions are real, measurable and additional to what would have occurred in the absence of the project.

Annex I and Annex II Countries, and Developing Countries

Signatories to the UNFCCC are split into three groups: Annex I countries (industrialized countries) , Annex II countries (developed countries which pay for costs of developing countries) and Developing countries.

Annex I countries agree to reduce their emissions (particularly carbon dioxide) to target levels below their 1990 emissions levels. If they cannot do so, they must buy emission credits or invest in conservation.

Annex II countries, that have to provide financial resources for the developing countries, are a sub-group of the annex I countries consisting of the OECD members, without those that were with transition economy in 1992.

Developing countries have no immediate restrictions under the UNFCCC.

The UNFCCC Conference of Parties (COP)

The UNFCCC Conference of Parties met for the first time in Berlin, Germany in the spring of 1995. The Bali meeting last month was the 13th COP.

The COP-15 will be held in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2009. According to Danish Minister for the Environment, Connie Hedegaard, the summit's primary focus will be to obtain an agreement about CO2 and other greenhouse gas reductions after 2012 when the first commitment period under the Kyoto Protocol expires.

Hoc Working Group (AWG)

The Kyoto Protocol provides that COP acting as the Meeting of the Parties (CMP) shall initiate consideration of future commitments for Annex I Parties at least seven years before the end of the first commitment period.

Pursuant to that provision the CMP at its first session held at Montreal from Nov. 28 to Dec. 10 of 2005, established the Ad Hoc Working Group on Further Commitments for Annex I Parties under the Kyoto Protocol (AWG).

The AWG is mandated to report to each CMP on the status of its work. It aims to complete its work and have its results adopted by the Conference of the Parties at the earliest possible time to ensure that there is no gap between the first and second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a scientific body tasked to evaluate the risk of climate change caused by human activity. The panel was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), two organizations of the United Nations.

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