There are some parts of the business world, in my judgment, that are actually trying to ensure that the U.S. does not take on board the preponderance of arguments for global warming, and that is something I am really very concerned about.

We will not let governments off the hook. We will look to civil society to help us, to pin governments, to what they have committed to here. And we will report on it.

Maybe this society, if anything, has become more patriarchal, and that has to be combated.

The fossil-fuel-based development model has not benefitted all people and those who have benefitted least are now suffering great harm in the face of climate change.

I believe we should try to move away from the vocabulary and attitudes which shape the stereotyping of developed and developing country approaches to human rights issues. We are collective custodians of universal human rights standards, and any sense that we fall into camps of "accuser" and "accused" is absolutely corrosive of our joint purposes. The reality is that no group of countries has any grounds for complacency about its own human rights performance and no group of countries does itself justice by automatically slipping into the "victim" mode.

A culture is not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere.

The MDGs have been useful in moving human rights and development discourse together and in highlighting the need for greater accountability at all levels.