Co-ordinating Lead Authors

CONTENTS This chapter places climate change mitigation, mitigation policy , and the contents of the rest of the report in the broader context of development, equity, and sustainability. This context reflects the explicit conditions and principles laid down by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) on the pursuit of the ultimate objective of stabilizing greenhouse gas concentrations. The UNFCCC imposes three conditions on the goal of stabilization, namely, that it should take place within a time-frame sufficient to " allow ecosystems to adapt naturally to climate change, to ensure that food production is not threatened and to enable economic development to proceed in a sustainable manner " (Art. 2). It also specifies several principles to guide this process: equity, common but differentiated responsibilities, precaution, cost-effective measures, right to sustainable development, and support for an open international economic system (Art. 3). Previous IPCC assessment reports sought to facilitate this pursuit by comprehensively describing, cataloguing and comparing technologies and policy instruments that could be used to achieve mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions in a cost-effective and efficient manner. The present assessment advances this process by including recent analyses of climate change that place policy evaluations in the context of sustainable development. This expansion of scope is consistent both with the evolution of the literature on climate change and importance accorded by the UNFCCC to sustainable development including the recognition that " Parties have a right to, and should promote sustainable development " (Art. 3.4). It therefore goes some way towards filling the gaps in earlier assessments. Climate Change involves complex interactions between climatic , environmental, economic, political, institutional, social, and technological processes. It cannot be addressed or comprehended in isolation from broader societal goals (such as sustainable development), or other existing or probable future sources of stress. In keeping with this complexity, a multiplicity of approaches have emerged to analyze climate change and related challenges. Many of these incorporate concerns about development , equity, and sustainability (albeit partially and gradually) into their framework and recommendations. Each approach emphasizes certain elements of the problem, and focuses on certain classes of responses, including for example, optimal policy design, building capacity for designing and implementing policies, strengthening synergies between climate change mitigation and/or adaptation and other societal goals, and policies to enhance societal learning. These approaches are therefore complementary rather than mutually exclusive. This chapter brings together three broad classes of analysis, which …