The Foreign Service Journal, February 2008

When extreme weather, intensified by climate change, causes floods, people die. When the rains fail in Africa because of climate change, people die. The tragedy of Darfur is partly due to climate change— as rainfall dimin- ished, herders and farmers fought over the remaining arable land. As sea levels rise, deserts spread and glacier- fed rivers dry up, many millions of people must move or perish. Preparing for and adapting to a changing climate will be one of the central tasks of international relations for the rest of this century. That is why Vice President Al Gore and the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change won the 2007 Nobel Prize for Peace, not for biology or economics. The Nobel Academy recognized that envi- ronmental degradation is a precursor to impoverishment and conflict. Changing the climate puts human civiliza- tion at risk. The Need to Act Twenty years ago, in an historic act of foresight, two United Nations agencies — the World Meteorological Organization and the U.N. Environment Program— cre- ated the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. A scientific intergovernmental body, the IPCC has delivered increasingly clear and forceful reports about the growing threat of climate change. The now-authoritative science underscores the urgent and overdue need to act: every year that goes by increases the risk of harm and makes more difficult the task of stabilizing global temperatures at a tolerable level. This action must take at least three forms: negotiation, investment and adaptation — negotiation to reduce glob- al emissions, investment to bring about a complete trans- formation of the world’s energy systems, and country-by- country adaptation to the inevitable effects of climate change. Negotiation is now front and center as the world pre- pares to negotiate a new implementing agreement for the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. This treaty, signed in Rio de Janiero in 1992 by President George H.W. Bush and immediately ratified by the U.S. Senate, defined its objective as “stabilization of green- house gas concentrations in the atmosphere at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” The 1997 Kyoto Protocol and the December 2007 negotiations in Bali represent ongo- ing efforts to implement the convention and make it effec- tive. The first commitment period under the original Kyo- to Protocol comes to an end in 2012, so the critical task is to negotiate what comes next — preferably a new and comprehensive global agreement that puts the world on a path to achieve the Framework Convention’s objective. The negotiations leading to the Kyoto agreement were prolonged and extremely difficult, and the ambitions then were relatively modest compared to the challenge today. It will therefore be even more difficult and complex to reach agreement this time. But world opinion has shifted over the past decade toward full recognition of the scale of the threat and the urgency of action, sparking optimism that common ground can be found. To have a new climate agreement in place by 2012, however, negotiations must be completed by the end of 2009 to allow time for ratifi- cation and implementation. To initiate development of a post-2012 framework for international cooperation on climate change, 187 coun- tries met in Bali, Indonesia. On Dec. 15, 2007, they adopted a negotiating roadmap for 2008-2009. That agreement calls on nations to complete within two years a comprehensive agreement for preventing cata- strophic climate change. The Bali roadmap calls for cre- ation of a long-term global emissions reduction goal con- sistent with the U.N. Framework Convention’s goal of preventing “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.” It calls on developed nations to take the lead on emissions reduction targets, while recognizing that all nations have an obligation to reduce emissions, consistent with national development objectives and the F O C U S 16 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 8 Timothy Wirth has been the president of the United Nations Foundation and Better World Fund since those organizations were founded in 1998. He began his polit- ical career as a White House Fellow under President Lyndon Johnson and was later deputy assistant secretary for education in the Nixon administration. Wirth then returned to his home state of Colorado and successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives, representing the 2nd Congressional District from 1975 to 1987. In the House, he concentrated his efforts in the areas of communications technology and budget policy. Elected to the U.S. Senate in 1986, he focused on envi- ronmental issues, particularly global climate change and population stabilization, until 1993. He then served in the U.S. Department of State as the first under secretary for global affairs from 1993 to 1997.