Climate Change and Ozone Protection

Alan's work on protecting the ozone layer began in 1978 with the Natural Resources Defense Council, leading a 12-country comparative study of responses to the new issue as background for the second international meeting of governments in Munich. Thereafter he supported Congressional appearances by the co-author of the ozone depletion hypothesis, Dr. Sherwood Rowland (a future Nobel Laureate) and initiated the first lawsuit against EPA advocating more regulation of ozone depleting compounds.

In 1984 Alan joined the new World Resources Institute (WRI) to work on both ozone depletion and climate change. At WRI, he organized press briefings, hosted the first trans-Atlantic meeting of environmental groups to discuss their shared interest in protecting the ozone layer, and published papers on ozone protection, climate change, and clean energy.

Alan also attended the 1988 Toronto Conference, the first international meeting with government participation to call for significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and meetings of scientists culminating in the creation of the scientific body for review of climate science, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

His association with WRI allowed him to attend early negotiations leading to the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Moving to the GEF and World Bank allowed him to become a regular at meetings of the UNFCCC beginning with the Kyoto Conference in 1997. After his retirement from the IFC at the end of 2013, Alan continued to attend the climate negotiations, including the 2015 Paris meeting, as a representative of UNDP.