Environmental Conventions and Agreements: Stockholm 1972, the Montreal Protocol, the Conferences of Parties, Basel, Ramsar, the Rio Earth Summit and Agenda 21, the GEF, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC, the Kyoto Protocol and the CDM, Johannesburg 2002, Rio+20, the Millennium Development Goals, Copenhagen 2009, and the IPCC, UNEP and IGBP

The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal was adopted in 1989 and entered into force in 1992, which is why the syllabus gives both dates. It followed scandals in which hazardous wastes from industrialised countries were dumped in Africa and elsewhere. It requires prior informed consent of the importing and transit states before hazardous wastes are shipped, minimisation of their generation and environmentally sound management, and treats illegal traffic as criminal. The Ban Amendment (1995, in force 2019) prohibits exports of hazardous wastes from OECD and EU countries to other countries, and amendments of 2019 brought most plastic waste under its control from 2021. India became a party in 1992.

The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands of International Importance, especially as Waterfowl Habitat, was signed at Ramsar in Iran on 2 February 1971, now marked as World Wetlands Day, and entered into force in 1975; it is the oldest of the modern global environmental treaties. Parties designate wetlands for the List of Wetlands of International Importance, commit to the "wise use" of all their wetlands and cooperate on shared wetlands. The Montreux Record lists Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character have occurred or are likely; in India, Keoladeo National Park and Loktak Lake are on it, while Chilika was removed in 2002 after restoration. India acceded in 1982, and its first sites were Chilika and Keoladeo; India's network has grown rapidly since 2022.

The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the Earth Summit, met at Rio de Janeiro in June 1992, twenty years after Stockholm, with sustainable development as its theme. It produced the Rio Declaration of 27 principles, among them Principle 7 (common but differentiated responsibilities), Principle 10 (public participation and access to information), Principle 15 (the precautionary approach) and Principle 16 (the polluter pays); Agenda 21, a comprehensive action plan for the twenty-first century in 40 chapters, which encouraged local governments to adopt Local Agenda 21 programmes; and the non-binding Forest Principles. The UNFCCC and the Convention on Biological Diversity were opened for signature there, and the Commission on Sustainable Development was created to follow up.

The Global Environment Facility was set up in 1991 as a pilot programme in the World Bank, with UNDP and UNEP as the other original implementing agencies, and was restructured in 1994 after Rio. It provides grants to developing countries for projects that bring global environmental benefits, and it serves as the financial mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC, the Stockholm Convention on persistent organic pollutants, the Convention to Combat Desertification and the Minamata Convention. The Convention on Biological Diversity (1992, in force December 1993) has three objectives: the conservation of biological diversity, the sustainable use of its components, and the fair and equitable sharing of the benefits arising from the use of genetic resources. It recognises national sovereignty over genetic resources. Its protocols are the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety (2000, in force 2003), on living modified organisms, and the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-sharing (2010, in force 2014). Its strategic plans set the Aichi Biodiversity Targets (2010) and, at COP15 in 2022, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, with 23 targets including the conservation of 30% of land and sea by 2030. India implements it through the Biological Diversity Act 2002.

The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (1992, in force March 1994) states its ultimate objective in Article 2: to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations "at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system". It rests on common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities, and divides countries into Annex I (industrialised countries and economies in transition) and non-Annex I (developing countries, including India). The Kyoto Protocol (1997, in force February 2005) gave the Annex B countries binding targets that added up to an average cut of about 5.2% below 1990 levels in the first commitment period, 2008 to 2012, covering six gases: carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride. It allowed three flexible mechanisms: international emissions trading, joint implementation between Annex I countries, and the Clean Development Mechanism. The Doha Amendment (2012) set a second commitment period, 2013 to 2020. The United States never ratified the Protocol and Canada withdrew from it.

Under the Clean Development Mechanism (Article 12 of the Protocol), an Annex I country or company could invest in a project that reduced emissions in a developing country, such as a wind farm, a biomass plant or the destruction of a potent industrial gas, and earn certified emission reductions, each equal to one tonne of carbon dioxide equivalent, to count towards its own target, while the host country gained investment and technology. Projects had to show additionality, that the reductions would not have happened anyway, and were registered by the CDM Executive Board; India and China hosted a large share of them. Under the Paris Agreement a new crediting mechanism under Article 6.4 takes over this role. At Copenhagen (COP15, 2009), hopes of a binding successor to Kyoto failed; the conference only "took note" of the Copenhagen Accord, which recognised the goal of limiting warming to 2 °C and recorded developed countries' goal of mobilising 100 billion US dollars a year by 2020 for developing countries. The Paris Agreement (COP21, 2015, in force November 2016) then replaced top-down targets with nationally determined contributions from all countries, submitted every five years, with the aim of holding warming well below 2 °C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5 °C, and a global stocktake every five years, the first completed in 2023.

The UN Millennium Summit of September 2000 adopted the Millennium Declaration, from which came eight Millennium Development Goals with 2015 as their target year: to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, achieve universal primary education, promote gender equality, reduce child mortality, improve maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases, ensure environmental sustainability (Goal 7) and develop a global partnership for development. The World Summit on Sustainable Development at Johannesburg (2002), ten years after Rio, adopted the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, focused on the WEHAB priorities of water, energy, health, agriculture and biodiversity, and launched partnerships between governments, business and civil society. The UN Conference on Sustainable Development, Rio+20 (June 2012), adopted "The Future We Want", which promoted the green economy, replaced the Commission on Sustainable Development with a High-level Political Forum and launched the process that produced the Sustainable Development Goals of 2015.