Climate change and sustainable development

This special issue of the Natural Resources Forum is being published as the challenge of climate change is the subject of intense public debate and continued attention in various international fora. At the eleventh Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which took place in December 2005, the parties launched a dialogue to analyse strategic approaches for long-term cooperative action to address climate change, focussing on sustainable development, adaptation, technology, and market-based opportunities. The conference in Montreal, which also served as the first Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol, adopted a raft of decisions giving full effect to the Protocol. Importantly, the parties to the Protocol also initiated a process to consider further commitments by Annex I Parties beyond 2012, when the current commitment period comes to an end. The next climate change conference, taking place in Kenya in November 2006, will have a special focus on Africa, a continent that is particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. The Convention is the central multilateral framework for addressing all aspects of climate change. Within the broader context of the United Nations’ action on sustainable development, climate change also formed part of the thematic cluster — with energy, industrial development, and air pollution/atmosphere — reviewed by the Commission on Sustainable Development at its fourteenth session in May 2006. In reviewing progress in implementing Agenda 21 and the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) of the World Summit on Sustainable Development, the Commission focussed on identifying constraints and barriers to implementation with regard to the thematic cluster. Ministers attending the high-level segment addressed the way forward and called for promoting, with a sense of urgency, international cooperation on climate change, including both mitigation and adaptation, and strengthening international support for vulnerable countries on adaptation measures, in particular least developed countries (LDCs) and small island developing states (SIDS). At its upcoming fifteenth session in May 2007, the Commission will take policy decisions on practical measures and options to expedite implementation in the thematic cluster of issues. At the international level there are signs that the approach to climate change is shifting from one based on environment to one cast more broadly in terms of sustainable development. The outcome of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) strengthened the concept of sustainable development by addressing its three dimensions: economic, social, and environmental. The JPOI addresses climate change and its adverse effects and clearly links it with poverty and other development concerns, such as land degradation, access to water and food, and human health. The Delhi Ministerial Declaration, adopted at the eighth Conference of the Parties (COP-8) in the wake of the WSSD, underlined development concerns in the context of climate change, reaffirming that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the overriding priorities of parties to the Convention, particularly developing countries. The Declaration also highlighted the importance of adaptation for all countries. The 2005 World Summit outcome document links climate change with energy issues in the context of sustainable development. It notes the challenges faced in tackling climate change, promoting clean energy, meeting energy needs and achieving sustainable development. Taking its cue from these developments, the United Nations system is moving toward an integrated approach to dealing with climate change by enhancing inter-agency cooperation, in this process underlining the centrality of the Convention, supporting the market-based mechanisms and the role of the private sector, and welcoming complementary initiatives/partnerships. The approach also entails efforts to mainstream the twin issues of mitigation and adaptation in the work of the funds, programmes, agencies and regional commissions. Viewing climate change in the context of sustainable development has a number of implications. Such an approach means that poverty eradication and socio-economic development are necessary for combating climate change. The critical effort of developing and diffusing clean energy technologies is being stepped up. At the same time, enhanced access for the poor to modern services also needs to be vigorously pursued. Concrete initiatives for technology cooperation between North and South, and South–South, could help realize the promise of technology transfer. Incorporating climate change response measures into development planning, including National Sustainable Development Strategies, could contribute to achieving the objectives of both the Climate Change Convention and the sustainable development goals. For instance, integrating adaptation measures into development planning could contribute to poverty eradication, while at the same time reducing the vulnerability of the poorest communities to climate variability and climate change. The articles in this issue give a rich and informative insight into key aspects of the climate change challenge. Running through them — implicit in some, explicit in others — is a common thread linking climate change and sustainable development. By broadening the scope of our analysis to consider climate change in the context of sustainable development, we improve our understanding of the problem — and, perhaps more importantly, begin to focus on implementing real solutions.

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