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

• Author: Ginzburg, Alexander

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° 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...