Confronting Climate Change: Avoiding the Unmanageable and Managing the Unavoidable

Report prepared for the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development

Note

Download Executive Summary (.pdf)

Download Errata (.pdf). This replaces page 15 of the full text.

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.