Published on 27 November 2007. Professor Jeffrey D Sachs, Director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University.

" With the world initiating new climate change negotiations in December 2007 to succeed the Kyoto Protocol expiring in 2012, there is still no shared framework for agreement between developed and developing countries. There has been a sea change in global attention to this issue in the past three years, reflected in this year’s 2007 Nobel Peace Prize which is shared by former Vice-President Al Gore and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Yet there is still no consensus on how to proceed. This brief note sketches out a framework for action, building on the underlying core facts of the climate change challenge itself.

The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), under whose auspices the December negotiations will proceed, is a remarkably sound framework for global action. Fifteen years ago, the world’s nations agreed on the proper core objective, “to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at a level to avoid dangerous anthropogenic interference in the climate system.” They agreed that all countries must adopt plans of action consistent with this objective, but that the developed countries (called the Annex I countries in the Kyoto Protocol) must take the lead. The Treaty’s doctrine on cross-country responsibilities, familiar from other agreements as well, is one of “common but differentiated responsibilities...”