Climate Change 2014: Mitigation of Climate Change.

In keeping with the previous IPCC assessments, this chapter considers sustainable development (SD) and equity as matters of policy relevance for climate change decision makers. The chapter examines the ways in which climate change is in fact inextricably linked with SD and equity, and it does so with the aim of drawing policy-relevant conclusions regarding equitable and sustainable responses to climate change. In one direction, the link is self-evident: an effective climate response is necessary for equitable and sustainable development to occur. The disruptions that climate change would cause in the absence of an effective societal response are sufficiently severe (see Working Group (WG) I and II contributions to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5)) to severely compromise development, even taking into account future societies' ability to adapt (Shalizi and Lecocq, 2010). Nor is this development likely to be equitable, as an increasingly inhospitable climate will most seriously undermine the future prospects of those nations, communities, and individuals that are in greatest need of development. Without an effective response to climate change, including both timely mitigation and proactive adaptation, development can be neither sustainable nor equitable.