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The IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) is a body created within the United Nations system in charge of the elaboration of reports in support of the different governments on matters related to Climate Change, its impacts and the adaptation and mitigation strategies. The paper analyses the background and reasons that lead to the creation of the IPCC, the main milestones in its lifetime and describes how it works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of Carbon Footprint, its origin, its relation with greenhouse gases and the methods to quantify it are presented and analyzed. The so-called greenhouse effect causes that the energy that reaches the earth at a certain rate is returned to a slower rate, increasing the temperature of the earth surface. Additionally, it is nowadays accepted that this effect is produced by some gases that are naturally emitted or produced by human actions. The Carbon Footprint is considered to be one of the most important tools for quantifying greenhouse emissions and in a general form it represents the quantity of gases emitted to the atmosphere and that is produced by human activities, and by goods and service consumption. Since there is no consensus about the definition of Carbon Footprint or the forms of quantifying it, this first part of the paper series analyzes the main concept and the main present views on the Carbon Footprint. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]