The World Climate Change Conference was held in Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 from September 29 to October 3, 2003. The initiative of convening the Conference was taken by Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin served as the second President of the Russian Federation and is the current Prime Minister of Russia, as well as chairman of United Russia and Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Union of Russia and Belarus. He became acting President on 31 December 1999, when...

, the President of the Russian Federation. The Conference was convened by the Russian Federation, and supported by international bodies including the United Nations

United Nations

The United Nations is an international organization whose stated aims are facilitating cooperation in international law, international security, economic development, social progress, human rights, and achievement of world peace...

 http://ods-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N02/556/36/PDF/N0255636.pdf?OpenElement. It should not be confused with the World Climate Conference

World Climate Conference

The world climate conferences are a series of international meetings, organized by the World Meteorological Organization , about global climate issues. The first two conferences largely focused on climate change in addition to climate research and forecasting...

s.

The conference summary report http://web.archive.org/web/20031210123748/www.wccc2003.org/report.htm, which was endorsed at concluding session of the Conference, October 3, 2003, endorsed the consensus represented by the IPCC

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...

 TAR:

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has provided the basis for much of our present understanding of knowledge in this field in its Third Assessment Report (TAR) in 2001. A large majority of the international scientific community has accepted its general conclusions that climate change is occurring, is primarily a result of human emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, and that this represents a threat to people and ecosystems. Some divergent scientific interpretations were brought forward and discussed in the Conference.

Andreas Fischlin, conference participant and IPCC author was critical of the conference, saying:

However, concerning the scientific content of the conference, we had also to struggle with considerable difficulties. Unfortunately, there were not only leading scientists present, but also some colleagues who used the conference to express personal, political opinions based on value judgement instead of scientific facts and rigorously derived, scientific insights and thorough understanding. Thereby, I believe, principles of proper scientific conduct were violated too often and sometimes, I am afraid having to say so, even systematically. This contrasts sharply with the principles upheld by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is a scientific intergovernmental body which provides comprehensive assessments of current scientific, technical and socio-economic information worldwide about the risk of climate change caused by human activity, its potential environmental and...

), which allow only to assess the current knowledge based on the best available, peer reviewed scientific literature and which do not allow for any non-scientific value judgements, let alone policy recommendations. http://www.sysecol.ethz.ch/WCCC2003.html

External links

• http://web.archive.org/web/20031202202344/www.wccc2003.org/index_e.htm - archived copy from The Wayback Machine
• Afterthoughts On the World Climate Change Conference 2003 Prepared by Andreas Fischlin, conference participant and IPCC author