The United Nations Climate Change Conference 2005 is being held from 28 November to 9 December in Montreal, Canada. It is expected to assemble between 8,000 and 10,000 participants, among them government delegates, business and civic leaders and environmental activists. As such, it is the largest such meeting since the Kyoto Climate Conference in 1997.



The high level of interest is not least due to the fact that the conference is serving as the 1st ever meeting of the 156 Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (COP/MOP1), following its entry into force in February of this year. At the same time, it is serving as the 11th Conference of the 189 Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).
Parties to the Kyoto Protocol are expected to adopt a set of decisions critical to complete the 'rule book' of the Protocol. For example, they are expected to agree on steps to strengthen the clean development mechanism, a tool designed under the Protocol to support sustainable development projects that reduce greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries. It has been demonstrated that greenhouse gases are one of the main factors responsible for the increased number of extreme events such as floods or droughts observed over the past decades.