The UN role in climate change action: taking the lead towards a global response.

• Author: Steiner, Achim
• Position: United Nations

Over the coming weeks and months, the three Special Envoys on climate change appointed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will be making whistle-stop tours of key capital cities to build a solid and sustainable consensus on action over climate change. Gro Harlem Brundtland of Norway, Han Seung-soo of the Republic of Korea and Ricardo Lagos Escobar of Chile underline the seriousness with which the Secretary-General takes the threats, as well as the opportunities presented by the immense challenges documented in the recently published reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The United Nations is the only forum in which an agreement aimed at reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions beyond 2012 can realistically be brokered among the 190 plus countries with different outlooks and economies but of a common atmosphere. The climate change challenge involves every nation and will, if unchecked, touch every community and citizen on a time-scale of decades rather than centuries.

In 2007, climate change truly became an issue of highest concern to the United Nations, because there is now the full understanding that the phenomenon will fundamentally affect the way the world operates in the twenty-first century--from health care, aid and water to economic activity, humanitarian assistance, peacebuilding and security concerns. The United Nations has played a pivotal role in building the scientific consensus, raising the issue to the front pages of the world's media and putting it in the in-tray of Heads of State and Government, as well as the chief executive officers of businesses and industries. Since February 2007, the IPCC has published three important reports, and the more than 2,000 scientists and experts of the IPCC have put an end to any doubts in the science debate. Climate change is happening and the links between rising temperatures and human activities are considered "unequivocal". The IPCC has outlined the likely impacts of climate change in the coming decades if the international community fails to act. These include sea-level rise, which could deprive millions of people from Bangladesh to the small islands of their land and livelihoods, in addition to the melting of mountain glaciers, which are the source of water for millions of people, businesses and farmers around the world. However, the IPCC has also noted other factors that are cause for hope and must be the catalysts for action. The experts in their report...