Global experts have submitted a report to the United Nations on how the world’s top economies can help avoid climate disaster. The study for Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon details specific steps that countries can take to help keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius, the target level for staving off devastating global warming. The Pathways to Deep Decarbonization Project is being billed as the most comprehensive of its kind to outline practical measures to counter climate change. Project member Jeffrey Sachs, director of Columbia University’s Earth Institute, said that if countries do not adapt, the world is on pace for a temperature hike of 4 degrees or higher.

Jeffrey Sachs: “What’s concerning about this report is that we are way off track, and to get on track will require major cooperative efforts that are right now not in place. Two degrees Centigrade limit is not easily achieved. We’re on a trajectory of some 4 degrees Centigrade or more, depending on exactly the assumptions that one makes. And all of the evidence is that the business-as-usual path would be an absolutely reckless and unforgivable gamble with this planet.”

The United Nations will hold a climate change summit in New York in September as part of negotiations for a global agreement by the end of next year.