Introduction and overview

The international negotiations on climate change in November 2000 in The Ha gue collapsed amid broad media coverage. Getting the talks rapidly back on track failed and they will now resume in Bonn in July 2001. In the meantime , however, the political landscape has changed: there is a new US administr ation, and new scientific conclusions from the Intergovernmental Panel on C limate Change have been released. The introduction and overview to this iss ue of International Affairs introduces five articles, all of which agree th at the 1997 Kyoto Protocol on climate change can be saved. The rescue can b e made either through fundamental changes to the Protocol itself or by lear ning the lessons of the failed round of negotiations in The Hague. On the b asis of an assessment of the five articles, the author proposes his own sol ution-to un-bundle the issues that had accumulated in the three years since Kyoto. The author believes that some of the key developing-country Article s, dealing with issues such as adaptation, capacity building, and financial and technology transfer, can he dealt with outside the pressure of the tar gets and timetables. Decisions on Kyoto's emission targets, mechanisms and some aspects of 'sinks' would be made easier without the 'inter-connectedne ss' with the 'developing-country: issues'. It might even be possible, he su ggests, to negotiate some deals on targets within smaller groups of countri es such as the EU, or those countries that have targets, the Annex B countr ies.