Dr. Kartha is a Senior Scientist at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI), whose research and publications focus on energy technology assessment and policy analyses relating to climate change and sustainable development. As Director of SEI Climate and Energy Programme, he focuses on equity and efficiency in the formation of an international climate regime, and has worked with policy makers, private sector actors, foundations, and NGOs throughout the world. A major area of Dr. Kartha's research regards global instruments for responding to climate change, such as emissions trading, joint implementation, and the CDM. He has provided technical input to the UNFCCC Secretariat, the World Bank Carbon Finance Unit, the GEF, and several international research collaborations. Dr. Kartha also works on the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of advanced biomass energy technologies and supply in developing countries. In this regard, he has provided expert technical input to the United Nations Development Programme, the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme of the World Bank, civil society groups and foundations.

The vast majority of emission reductions required to prevent an intolerable level of climate change must occur in the developing world, where most emissions now occur and where emissions are growing most rapidly. Yet, the human development aspirations of the developing world require epanded energy services, which in turn seem inexorably to imply increasing carbon emissions. This seemingly inviolable syllogism is at the very core of our climate predicament, as developing countries have unambiguously insisted that, as important as it is to deal with climate change, a solution cannot come at the expense of their development. The Greenhouse Development Rights framework is a climate regime architecture explicitly structured to safeguard a right to development. As a burden-sharing framework, it defines and transparently quantifies the obligations appropriate to the world's comparatively wealthy individuals – both in the developing countries and industrialized countries – in terms of the UNFCCC's touchstone principle of "common but differentiated responsibilities". [click here for video of the lecture]