The imminence and severity of the
problems posed by the accelerating
changes in the global climate are
becoming increasingly evident. Heat
waves are becoming more severe,
droughts and downpours are becoming
more intense, the Greenland Ice
Sheet is shrinking and sea level
is rising, and the increasing acidification
of the oceans is threatening calcifying
organisms. The environment and the
world’s societies are facing
increasing stress.
There is growing recognition of
the complex scientific and technical
issues related to climate change
and sustainable development. The
Johannesburg Plan of Implementation,
adopted in 2002 at the World Summit
on Sustainable Development, requested
that the United Nations Commission
on Sustainable Development (CSD)
“[g]ive greater consideration
to the scientific contributions
to sustainable development through,
for example, drawing on the scientific
community.”
The United Nations Department of
Economic and Social Affairs (DESA),
in its role as Secretariat to the
CSD, seeks to facilitate contributions
by the scientific community to the
work of the Commission. Accordingly,
DESA invited Sigma Xi, the Scientific
Research Society, to convene an
international panel of scientific
experts to prepare a report outlining
the best measures for mitigating
and adapting to global warming for
submission to the CSD.
To carry out this task, the Scientific
Expert Group on Climate Change and
Sustainable Development (SEG) was
formed and is comprised of 18 distinguished
international scientists. The panel
was asked to consider innovative
approaches for mitigating and/or
adapting to projected climate changes,
and to anticipate the relationship
of response measures to sustainable
development.
Highlights of the resulting report
include:
• To avoid a entering a regime of sharply rising danger of intolerable impacts on humans, policy
makers should limit temperature
increases from global warming to
2-2.5°C above the 1750 pre-industrial
level. It is still possible to avoid
unmanageable changes in the future,
but the time for action is now.
—Temperatures
have already risen about 0.8°C[1]
above pre-industrial levels and
are projected to rise of approximately
3-5°C over pre-industrial
levels by 2100.
—Avoiding temperature increases greater than 2-2.5°C would require very rapid success
in reducing emissions of methane
and black soot worldwide, and
global carbon dioxide emissions
must level off by 2015 or 2020
at not much above their current
amount, before beginning a decline
to no more than a third of that
level by 2100.
• The technology
exists to seize significant opportunities
around the globe to reduce emissions
and provide other economic, environmental
and social benefits, including meeting
the United Nations’ Millennium
Development Goals. To do so, policy
makers must immediately act to reduce
emissions by:
—Improving
efficiency in the transportation
sector through measures such as
vehicle efficiency standards,
fuel taxes, and registration fees/rebates
that favor purchase of efficient
and alternative fuel vehicles.
—Improving design and efficiency
of commercial and residential
buildings through building codes,
standards for equipment and appliances,
incentives for property developers
and landlords to build and manage
properties efficiently, and financing
for energy-efficiency investments.
—Expanding the use of biofuels
through energy portfolio standards
and incentives to growers and
consumers.
—Beginning immediately,
designing and deploying only coal-fired
power plants that will be capable
of cost-effective and environmentally-sound
retrofits for capture and sequestration
of their carbon emissions.
• Some level
of climate change and impacts from
it is already unavoidable. Societies
must do more to adapt to ongoing
and unavoidable changes in the Earth’s
climate system by:
—Improving
preparedness/response strategies
and management of natural resources
to cope with future climatic conditions
that will be. fundamentally different
than those experienced for the
last 100 years.
—Addressing the adaptation
needs of the poorest and most
vulnerable nations, which will
bear the brunt of climate change
impacts.
—Planning and building climate
resilient cities.
—Strengthening international,
national, and regional institutions
to cope with weather-related disasters
and an increasing number of climate
change refugees.
• The international
community, through the UN and related
multilateral institutions, can play
a crucial role in advancing action
to manage the unavoidable and avoid
the unmanageable by:
—Helping developing
countries and countries with economies
in transition to finance and deploy
energy efficient and new energy
technologies.
—Accelerating negotiations
to develop a successor international
framework for addressing climate
change and sustainable development.
—Educating all about the
opportunities to adopt mitigation
and adaptation measures.
