COP 28

WHY IN NEWS?

• Recently, the United Arab Emirates announced an offer to host the 28^thsession of Conference of Parties (COP 28) to the UNFCCC in Abu Dhabi in 2023.
• COP 26 was postponed in 2020 and will take place in Glasgow, UK in November 2021.

About UNFCCC:
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), signed in 1992 at the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development also known as the Earth Summit, the Rio Summit or the Rio Conference.

• India is among the select few countries to have hosted the COP of all three Rio conventions on climate change (UNFCCC), biodiversity (Convention on Biological Diversity) and land (United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification).

• The UNFCCC entered into force on 21^stMarch 1994, and has been ratified by 197 countries.
• It is the parent treaty of the 2015 Paris Agreement. It is also the parent treaty of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol.
• The UNFCCC secretariat (UN Climate Change) is the United Nations entity tasked with supporting the global response to the threat of climate change. It is located in Bonn, Germany.