Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD)

About

The Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development’s (IGSD) mission is to promote just and sustainable societies and to protect the environment by advancing the understanding, development, and implementation of effective, accountable and democratic systems of governance for sustainable development.

Beginning in 2005, the Institute embarked on a “fast-action” climate mitigation campaign to promote strategies that will result in significant reductions of emissions, temperature, and impacts in the near-term, focusing primarily on strategies to reduce non-CO₂ climate pollutants, to complement cuts in CO₂.

IGSD’s over-arching, multi-venue approach to fast-action climate mitigation is presented in a 2009 article by Molina, Zaelke, Sarma, Andersen, Ramanathan & Kaniaru, Reducing abrupt climate change risk using the Montreal Protocol and other regulatory actions to complement cuts in CO₂ emissions in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  The HFC part of this approach was further elaborated in a November 2012 article by Zaelke, Andersen & Borgford-Parnell, Strengthening Ambition for Climate Mitigation: The Role of the Montreal Protocol in Reducing Short-lived Climate Pollutants, in the Review of European Community & International Environmental Law.

IGSD’s fast-action strategies can be started in two to three years, substantially implemented in five years in developed countries, and ten years in developing countries, and can produce a response in the climate system on a timescale of decades, to complement cuts in CO₂, which operate on a longer timescale.  They also include measures to capture, reuse, and / or store CO₂ after it is emitted, including biosequestration and strategies to turn biomass into more stable forms of carbon for long-term storage.

In 2012, IGSD was elected to serve as the NGO representative on the Coalition's Steering Committee.