The relationship between the IPCC and the UNFCCC

There is a close relationship between the IPCC and the international efforts to fight global warming. The UN’s climate convention, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change), establishes the framework within which by far the largest part of the international cooperation on climate takes place.
It was the first assessment report from the IPCC that in 1990 was the catalyst for the arrival of climate on the political agenda. After merely two years the text for the climate convention was adopted in New York in May 1992. Later the same year the convention was signed by more than 150 countries at the UN's Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio De Janeiro. The countries that have ratified the convention meet every year at the COP meetings (Conference of the Parties to the Convention).Because the IPCC’s reports have both scientific and political support, they are the foundation upon which the UNFCCC cooperation is based. In addition the IPCC is a UN agency, and the UNFCCC’s technical and scientific subsidiary body (SBSTA) can ask the IPCC for relevant studies in relation to the negotiations. Accordingly it is the IPCC that draws up guidelines for how the individual countries are to calculate their emissions of greenhouse gases.