ABSTRACT
The year 2007 was the tenth anniversary of the Kyoto Protocol’s signing and the fifteenth anniversary of the signing of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). If for no other reasons it would be an important year in the progress towards addressing global climate change. However, it was a very important year regardless of anniversaries because of a sequence of major events and milestones that occurred in 2007. It was the year of the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that placed important, definitive and alarming scientific assessments before the global community – climate science conclusions could no longer be denied. 2007 was the year that the IPCC was awarded, jointly with former US VicePresident Al Gore, the Nobel Peace Prize, which gave climate change not only further recognition but also placed it clearly in the context of global peace and security. And 2007 was the year of the 13th Conference of the Parties under the UNFCCC and the 3rd Conference of Members of the Kyoto Protocol leading the important Bali Declaration and associated
decisions. This short paper will put these in the context of where we are and where the global community may be going as we look ahead to the next decade.
