After key negotiations in Bonn, we're in the homestretch to COP21, the pivotal global meeting in Paris in December where countries will agree on a new international climate agreement. Negotiators made significant progress at Bonn, but a strong COP21 outcome requires a much more vigorous pace.
Governance & Access
While members of the Open Government Partnership have made notable progress toward government accountability over the past four years, there has been little attention given to making land holdings and land transactions more transparent.
At a UN Summit in September, the largest-ever gathering of world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals, a bold new roadmap to tackle climate change and extreme poverty by 2030. The global community now faces the real work of translating vision into action. Fortunately, early actions by some countries already align with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and help point the way forward.
Africa is home to some of the fastest-growing economies on the planet, but the lack of affordable, reliable energy could challenge continued economic and social development. Distributed power generation could be part of the solution.
While dealing with sooty clouds from massive forest fires in recent weeks, Indonesia submitted its post-2020 climate action plan, committing to an unconditional target of a 29 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared to a business-as-usual scenario.
The death of Zimbabwe's iconic Cecil the lion has sparked widespread calls for punishment for the animal's killers. The U.S. Lacey Act, which aims to protect wildlife around the world, may apply.
Adaptation finance accountability is key to addressing obligations of national governments and international organizations to provide support, but actual funding decisions are often made without involving the populations hit first and worst by climate change, or without understanding how communities are vulnerable.
So who is accountable for making good use of adaptation funds, and who should hold whom accountable?
Climate change negotiations at COP 20 in Lima, Peru, have reached their mid-point and are moving into high gear. This week will be crucial as talks continue on a draft international climate agreement due to be concluded in Paris at the end of 2015.
Here are three issues to watch.
The just concluded U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit focused attention on Africa’s promises and challenges, including energy, agriculture and the $14 billion in investment pledged by companies. The visiting heads of state—just shy of 50—also discussed climate change and its effects on crop production, nutrition and food security. New research by the World Resources Institute and Rights and Resources Initiative on the climate dividends of secure community land rights can help Africa address these challenges.
WRI’s six-part blog series, Mobilizing Clean Energy Finance, highlights individual developing countries’ experiences in scaling up investments in clean energy and explores the role climate finance plays in addressing investment barriers. The cases draw on WRI’s recent report, Mobilizing Climate Investment.
Mexico’s experiences with wind energy provide an important case study for policy makers pursuing renewable energy deployment in other countries.