Energy And Global Climate Change - Bridging The Sustainable Development Divide

Energy and Global Climate Change: Bridging the Sustainable Development Divide focuses attention on two urgent global development challenges faced by the UN and its member states: access to sustainable energy for all and global climate change. This book presents compelling evidence about an often neglected aspect of the energy--climate change--development nexus faced by millions of poor people: problems caused by the use of inefficient and polluting energy sources, and the lack of access to sustainable energy services.

Based on a detailed examination of major UN global climate change and sustainable development negotiated outcomes over the course of several decades, this book argues in a powerful and insightful manner that intergovernmental negotiated out comes aimed at solving the climate change and energy access challenges have been restricted by being placed in different negotiating silos. This "siloization," or compartmentalization, has resulted in separate tracks of negotiated outcomes on two inextricably linked global development challenges, and has thereby hindered prospects for integrated action.

This book points out that the existence of these two silos is especially hard to ignore in light of the urgent UN-led quest for an integrated and universal post-2015 development agenda anticipated to be anchored by new sustainable development goals on energy access and climate change. By addressing the heavy reliance on inefficient and polluting energy services which result in indoor air pollution and short lived climate pollutants that tragically impact millions of poor people, this book highlights the unique importance of integrated action on the energy-poverty-climate change nexus in the UN's post-2015 development era.

Anilla Cherian is an independent, global energy and sustainable development expert who has worked with a number of UN organizations and globally recognized research institutions and foundations over the course of the past two decades. She has provided strategic advice, prepared expert reports, and published peer-reviewed papers on a wide range of topics, including global climate change, energy for sustainable development, energy access and poverty reduction, financing for sustainable development, water and sanitation, and the conservation and sustainable management of biodiversity resources. She has received fellowships and grant funding from the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Institute for the Study of World Politics.