How to avoid the unmanageable and manage the unavoidable climate changes.

Alpine ski resorts are churning out artificial snow, wrote Laura MacInnis in her story, "Fake Snow in Alps, Moscow Blooms: Green Christmas?", published by Reuters News Service on 13 December 2006. Daisies are blooming by the Kremlin and retailers are fretting that Europeans are simply too warm to go Christmas shopping in a record mild winter.

In the Russian Federation, record temperatures in December kept bears from hibernating, while flowers such as daisies and purple violets have been seen around the capital. Usually gripped by ice, Moscow basked at a record 7.7[degrees] Celsius on 7 December. From a scientific point of view, last winter's weather conditions in northern Eurasia and America were very unique--extreme weather and not a climatic event. Climate change is a much slower process. The last two decades were much warmer than the average temperatures during the base period of 1960-1990. The past years clearly show that global warming and weather extremes are realities of the current epoch, which bring a very serious challenge to humanity.

The United Nations is trying to bring worldwide attention to climate change. Its best known activity in this area is the creation of and support for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), already in operation for almost two decades under the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). With the turn of the new millennium, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) organized its work based on a two-year cycle, each focusing on selected thematic clusters of issues. Within the broader context of the United Nations action on sustainable development, climate change--with energy, industrial development and air pollution/atmosphere--is part of the CSD thematic cluster for the 2006/2007 cycle.

The IPCC in 2007 presented its Fourth Assessment and other reports, including one by the Scientific Expert Group (SEG) titled "Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable". Prepared for the 15th session of the Commission (CSD15), the report outlines a road map for preventing unmanageable climate changes and adapting to the degree of change that can no longer be avoided. The expert team was invited to make recommendations on key mitigation and adaptation needs. The United Nations Foundation and the scientific research society Sigma Xi, organizing the SEG, presented the final report to the CSD Intergovernmental Preparatory Meeting on 27 February 2007.

Some very important UN events related to climate change issues were held in 2007, such as the first-ever Security Council debate on the impact of climate change on 17 April, where several delegates raised doubts on whether the Council was the proper forum to discuss the issue. Vitaly Churkin of the Russian Federation said his country was an active participant in the global efforts to address climate change. The country's decision to ratify the Kyoto Protocol had brought that important instrument into existence. Since then, the Russian Federation has significantly reduced its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and intends to carry out its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol through 2012. The Government believes that all future action on global warming and climate change should be based on sound scientific information. Mr. Churkin appealed to the international community to consider the climate change issue in all its aspects, in a comprehensive manner and within the appropriate international forums, such as CSD, WMO and the UN General Assembly, adding that the Security Council should only deal with issues directly under its mandate. On 27 April, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon held meetings with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and former United States Vice President Al Gore. On 30 April, CSD15 started, putting an end to the two-year thematic cycle related to climate change. These top-level UN activities show how deeply and seriously UN leadership is involved in one of the most significant problems facing humanity.

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As the Deputy Director of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, I fully agree with the CSD statement that "climate change is not just an environmental issue; it is an issue firmly placed in the context of sustainable development and it requires the urgent attention of the international community". Carbon dioxide, methane and GHG, in current concentrations, are not dangerous air pollutants, but they affect global climate and humanity. The United Nations, as the world's leading intergovernmental body, must act collectively and urgently to change the course of climate change through all levels of leadership. There is no more time for delay.

The IPCC report provides the international community, and especially the United Nations, with information about the current stages and future patterns of climate change, including possible adaptation and mitigation measures. The SEG report outlines a set of recommendations on how to avoid the unmanageable and how to manage the unavoidable climate changes. The main ideas of the SEG and the proposals of the CSD (see box next page) are not a duplication of the work of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Kyoto Protocol, but are recommendations in the area of climate change mitigation and adaptation. As one of the lead authors of the SEG report, I am very satisfied that many of the CSD recommendations are close to milestones of the report's road map for preventing the unmanageable and adapting to the degree of unavoidable climate changes. The whole spectrum of the CSD decisions is much wider than that of the SEG recommendations, but the Group's report considered some other specific issues, such as the proposal to create and rebuild cities to be climate-resilient and GHG-friendly, taking advantage of the most advanced technologies and approaches for using land, freshwater, marine, terrestrial and energy resources. Some of the recommendations provided to the UN system and national governments are:

* Advocate and achieve a fourfold increase in global public and private investments in energy-technology research, emphasizing energy efficiency in transportation, buildings and the industrial sector, as well as in biofuels, solar, wind and other renewable technologies, including advanced technologies for carbon capture and sequestration.

* Promote a comparable increase in public and private investments, with particular emphasis on partnerships focused on demonstration and accelerated commercial deployment of energy technologies with large mitigation benefits.

* Use UN institutions and other specialized organizations to promote public-private partnerships that increase private-sector financing for energy-efficiency and renewable energy investments, drawing upon limited public resources to provide loan guarantees and interest rate buy-downs.

* Increase energy-technology research, development and demonstration in developing regions. Potential options for achieving this goal include arrangements between developed and developing countries, and strengthening the network of regional centres for energy technology research.

* Complete a study, over the next two years, on how to better plan, finance and deploy climate-friendly energy technologies, using the resources of the United Nations and other international agencies, such as the United Nations Development Programme, the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility.

As a scientist and SEG member, I hope that these recommendations will help the United Nations and the CSD to lead a worldwide movement in making all human activities much more climate-friendly.

Alexander Ginzburg is Deputy Director of the A.M. Obukhov Institute of Atmospheric Physics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He heads the Laboratory of Mathematical Ecology and is an Executive Editor-in-Chief of the journal Izvestiya, Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics. Mr. Ginzburg is a leading author of Sigma Xi, the UN Scientific Expert Group Report on Climate Change and Sustainable Development.

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COMPARISON OF SOME SEG AND CSD RECOMMENDATIONS

                                      Commission on Sustainable
Scientific Expert Group               Development

* Move towards a more sustainable     * Increase financial incentives
  energy environment. Improve           for the use of advanced energy
  efficiency in the transportation      technologies, including cleaner
  sector through measures, such as      fossil fuel, energy-efficiency
  vehicle efficiency, fuel taxes and    and renewable energy
  registration fees, in addition to     technologies and promote fuel
  the expansion and strengthening of    efficiency in the transport
  public transportation and regional    sector.
  planning.                           * Enhance technology cooperation
* Implement a new global policy         and information-sharing on
  framework for mitigation that         climate-friendly and low-carbon
  results in significant emissions      technologies; strengthen North-
  reduction, spurs development and      South, South-South and
  deployment of clean energy            triangular cooperation in
  technologies, and allocates           research and development
  burdens and benefits fairly.          initiatives.
* Develop adaption strategies and     * Move towards strengthening the
  integrate them into resource          carbon market. Policies and
  management and infrastructure         actions should be based on the
  development and commit to helping     principles of sustainable
  the poorest nations and the most      development and poverty
  vulnerable communities cope with      eradication, which are the
  damages.                              priorities of developing
* Enhance early-warning systems to      countries.
  provide improved prediction of      * Support early-warning, risk-
  weather extremes, especially to       management, disaster reduction
  the most vulnerable countries and     and response measures for
  regions.                              developing countries,
* Increase investments and              particularly the most
  cooperation in energy technology      vulnerable, such as small
  innovation to develop new systems     island developing States and
  and practices that are needed to      least developed countries.
  avoid the most damaging             * Support the development,
  consequences of climate change.       deployment and diffusion of
* Improve communications to             low-carbon energy
  accelerate adaptation and             technologies, and increase
  mitigation by increasing education    financial incentives for the
  efforts and creating forums for       use of advanced energy
  dialogue, technology assessment       technologies, including
  and planning.                         cleaner fossil fuel and
                                        renewable energy technologies.
                                      * Encourage the integration of
                                        climate policies into national
                                        sustainable development and
                                        poverty reduction strategies
                                        with respect to adaptation and
                                        mitigation.

This table shows the common understanding of the mainstream ideas of
climate change mitigation and adaptation.