Introduction: The Role of the European Union as a Global Player in Environmental Governance

For the last 40 years the environment has been on the agenda at an international level, the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm being the first major conference on environmental issues. Principle 24 in the Declaration of that Conference set out that protection and improvement of the environment should be “handled in a cooperative spirit by all countries, big and small ... through multilateral or bilateral agreements or other appropriate means” (United Nations, undated). Subsequent conferences including the 1992 UN Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, and the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, increasingly brought environmental concerns to wider public attention. Those conferences were “highly influential in developing a ‘global view’ of our planet’s future”, resulting in thousands of initiatives taken locally, nationally or globally, and across a range of environmental challenges (Mebratu, 1988, p. 494). One such environmental concern has been climate change, with UN Climate Change Conferences taking place since 1979.