The Public-Private Alliance Foundation is currently working with stakeholders including biofuels and bioenergy producers, investors, non-governmental organizations, governments, academia and the UN family. We think it will help to have a shared language among all involved.

Today’s strong interest in alternatives to fossil fuels comes from (1) concerns about global warming; (2) interest in sustainable development;  and (3) the eventual end of the economic viability of fossils fuels.  This article focuses on the first two topics.  Future articles will focus on bio-fuels and bio-energy and on the Dominican Republic and Haiti.

Climate change is any long-term change in the statistics of weather over periods of time that range from decades to millions of years. It can express itself as a change in the mean weather conditions, the probability of extreme conditions, or in any other part of the statistical distribution of weather.    

Copenhagen Climate Conference December 2009     The United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15), in Copehhagen, 7-18 2009, will be the culimination of the international effort to address climate change before the Kyoto Treaty (below) expires in 2012.  The United States, which did not ratify the Kyoto Protocol (below) is very involved in work on the Copenhagen Protocol.

Gender Issues in Climate Change:   The Global Gender and Climate Alliance (GGCA), which includes many UN agencies as well as non-governmental organizations, aims to ensure that climate change policies, decisionmaking, and initiatives at the global, regional, and national levels are gender responsive.   It was launched at the UN Climate Change Conference in Bali in December 2007.

Global Warming refers to the increase in the average temperature of the Earth’s near-surface air and oceans since the mid-20th century and its projected continuation.  The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) concludes that increasing greenhouse gas concentrations resulting from human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation are responsible for most of the observed temperature increases. Low-lying countries and coastlines are particularly vulnerable to melting arctic ice and glaciers.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  - The IPCC is the leading body for the assessment of climate change.  It was established by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to provide the world with a clear scientific view on the current state of climate change and its potential environmental and socio-economic consequences.  It reviews and assesses the most recent scientific, technical and socio-economic information produced worldwide relevant to the understanding of climate change.  In 2007 the IPCC and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore were joint winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace. 

Kyoto Protocol   The Kyoto Protocol, adopted on 11 December 1997, is an international agreement linked to the UNFCCC.  Ratified by 184 parties, not including the US, it entered into force on 18 February 2005.  Its major feature is that it sets binding targets for 37 industrialized countries and the European community for reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.  These amount to an average of five per cent against 1990 levels over the five-year period 2008-2012.   While the Convention encouraged industrialized countries to stabilize GHG emissions, the Protocol commits them to doing so.  

 Sustainable Development    The 1987 United Nations Report Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development  (the Brundtland Commission)  defines sustainable development as a process of change in which the exploitation of resources, the direction of investments, the orientation of technological development; and institutional change are all in harmony and enhance both current and future potential to meet human needs and aspirations.

 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)   The Convention on Climate Change sets an overall framework for intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate change. The Convention entered into force on 21 March 1994.   The Convention recognizes that the climate system is a shared resource whose stability can be affected by industrial and other emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.  The Convention enjoys near universal membership, with 192 countries (including the United States) having ratified it.