The Moving to Access initiative, a collaboration between Brookings’s Metropolitan Policy Program and Global Economy and Development program, is an extensive, multi-year effort that seeks to inform and promote an access-first approach to urban transportation policy, planning, investment, and services. This event on January 11 brought together experts across three major disciplines—transportation, urban planning, and finance—and explored where these disciplines agree, where they diverge, and what policies could support a more accessible built environment. The event featured a panel discussion with current metropolitan leaders and distinguished scholars and closed with a keynote dialogue with U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx.

       

At the end of the month, governments from nearly 200 nations will convene in Paris, France for the 21st annual U.N. climate conference (COP21). Expectations are high for COP21 as leaders aim to achieve a legally binding and universal agreement on limiting global temperature increases for the first time in over 20 years. Ahead of this much anticipated event, Brookings experts have compiled a collection of comprehensive short briefs on key issues in climate action, including climate aid and finance, infrastructure, carbon pricing, the relationship between agriculture and climate, and more. You can download the full report here or scroll through the briefs below.

A Transformative End to the Year

2015 has been an unexpectedly positive year for climate change efforts, as the long-floundering U.N. process has finally begun to deliver some of what is needed. Make no mistake: We are still on track to overshoot the limits of our planet’s ability to absorb the fossil pollutants we are pumping into it. But substantial progress is being made, and denying that would be counterproductive to the important cooperation that has occurred.

Download the brief »

The Road from Paris

Although there is work still to be done, the Paris COP21 promises to be an important turning point in the fight against climate change and in linking that fight to the broader sustainable development agenda. After years of sharp divisions and stalled actions there is a widely shared recognition of the dangers of delay and greater collective resolve to act at the national and global levels. All major world leaders have signaled their strong support for an ambitious Paris agreement. And it is remarkable that so many of them are coming together on concrete programs of action, including the leaders of the two largest emitting countries—China and the United States.

Download the brief »

Pricing Carbon

In 2013, the UNFCCC set a path toward a new agreement for the post-2020 period. This year, negotiations have aimed to solidify that agreement and will culminate in Paris at the COP21 December meetings. So far, climate talks have tackled national emissions targets, global temperature targets, technology transfer, assistance to poor countries for adaptation and mitigation (a.k.a. “finance”), clean energy cooperation, forest preservation, compensation for countries affected economically by mitigation measures, and many other topics. In comparison to those issues, there has been little discussion of the most cost-effective means to reduce emissions: reducing fossil fuel subsidies and pricing greenhouse gas emissions.

Download the brief »

The Role of Public Policy in Sustainable Infrastructure

Infrastructure development, economic growth, and climate protection are intimately related. Infrastructure is a key driver of economic growth and development. In the current context of increasing concerns about prospects for global growth, infrastructure investment can play an especially important role, by boosting global aggregate demand today and laying stronger foundations for future growth. Infrastructure is also a key element of the climate change agenda. Done badly, it is a major part of the problem; infrastructure accounts for more than half of global carbon emissions. Done right, it is a major part of the solution, vital to both climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Download the brief »

Aid and Climate Finance

In 2009, the Copenhagen Accord was the first effort to spell out the financial implications of a global effort to reduce carbon emissions. Although not a legally binding document, delegates from all countries attending the COP15 meeting agreed to “take note” of the accord. Developed countries made three financial commitments as a result:

1. to provide $30 billion for mitigation and adaptation financing for the period 2010-2012;
2. to mobilize $100 billion per year by 2020; and
3. to make such funding new and additional, and sourced from public and private, bilateral and
multilateral institutions.

Download the brief »

Financing Sustainable Infrastructure

A key goal of the U.N. climate change negotiations is to agree on global mitigation actions that will limit global temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Achieving this climate goal will require a transition to a low-carbon economy. Climate finance will be needed to support this transition and to adapt to unavoidable climate change.

Download the brief »

Transforming the Global Energy Environment

In the wake of the December 2015 COP meeting in Paris the world will be confronted by a host of energy and environmental policy issues on how to meet the burgeoning projected energy demand for the next 20 years.

Download the brief »

Agriculture in the COP21 Agenda

In a few weeks, world leaders and international negotiators will gather in Paris, home of the famed Champs-Élysées, to establish a new generation’s global climate accord. However, the agreement is not likely to delve into the sector-level practicalities of how countries will achieve the relevant targets. From the perspective of agriculture, one of the foremost drivers and burden-bearers of climate change, the COP21 agreement might best be dubbed “Les Champs-Oubliés,” or forgotten fields, since it will largely neglect this fundamental concern of societies everywhere.

Download the brief »

United States: A Credible Climate Action Plan, but Political Uncertainty

The United States goes to the UNFCCC meetings in Paris in a good position to accomplish its goals for international cooperation: to reach a pragmatic international agreement that puts in place a framework to contain global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, and which includes action from all countries while also providing flexibility that would allow implementation to reflect national circumstances.

Download the brief »

China: Ambitious Targets and Policies

Over the last decade China has been actively engaged in improving energy efficiency and direct interventions aimed at addressing rising carbon emissions. As the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has made a number of commitments in the lead up to the meeting of the Conference of the Parties to be held in Paris in December 2015. In its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC), China committed by 2030:

• To achieve the peaking of carbon dioxide emissions around 2030 and making best efforts to
  peak early;
• To lower CO2 emissions per unit of GDP (emissions intensity) by 60-65 percent from the 2005
  level;
• To increase the share of non-fossil fuels in primary energy consumption to around 20 percent; and
• To increase the forest stock volume by around 4.5 billion cubic meters on the 2005 level.

Download the brief »

India: Potential for Even Greater Emissions Reductions

In 2013, India emitted 2.4 billion metric tons (GT) of carbon dioxide, making it the third-largest emitter in the world. India ranks in emissions behind only China (10.0 GT) and the United States (5.2 GT). Along with the European Union, these three countries emitted almost 60 percent of the worldwide CO2 emissions in 2013. Thus, India’s October submission of its Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) to the United Nations was widely anticipated.

Download the brief »

Africa: Financing Adaptation and Mitigation in the World’s Most Vulnerable Region

Africa is the continent that contributes the least to global warming in both absolute and per capita terms. Africa accounts for the smallest share of global greenhouse gas emissions—3.8 percent. This compares to the largest emitters like China, the United States, and the European Union, which account respectively for 23 percent, 19 percent, and 13 percent of global emissions. Africa contributes less to global warming than countries such as Russia and India (each accounts for 6 percent of global emissions). In a telling example, the Africa Progress Panel notes that it would take the average Ethiopian 240 years to register the same carbon footprint as the average American. The region’s low contribution to global warming is not surprising, as about two-thirds of its greenhouse emission is from land use, particularly from forest degradation and deforestation tied to the production of charcoal.

Download the brief »

       

On October 11, Global Economy and Development at Brookings will host a discussion on the challenges and opportunities toward reaching a new treaty on global climate change. Pascal Canfin, France’s deputy minister for development and lead climate change negotiator, will provide remarks and outline possible parameters for a new agreement. These remarks will be followed by a discussion with: Andrew Steer, president and CEO of the World Resources Institute; Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions; and Vicki Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center. Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Katherine Sierra will moderate the discussion.

After the program, panelists will take audience questions.

       

Executive Summary

Are climate finance contributor countries, multilateral aid agencies and specialized funds using widely accepted best practices in foreign assistance? How is it possible to measure and compare international climate finance contributions when there are as yet no established metrics or agreed definitions of the quality of climate finance? As a subjective metric, quality can mean different things to different stakeholders, while of donor countries, recipients and institutional actors may place quality across a broad spectrum of objectives. This subjectivity makes the assessment of the quality of climate finance contributions a useful and necessary exercise, but one that has many challenges. 

This work seeks to enhance the development of common definitions and metrics of the quality of climate finance, to understand what we can about those areas where climate finance information is available and shine a light on the areas where there is a severe dearth of data. Allowing for comparisons of the use of best practices across funding institutions in the climate sector could begin a process of benchmarking performance, fostering learning across institutions and driving improvements when incorporated in internal evaluation protocols of those institutions. In the medium term, this kind of benchmarking and transparency could support fundraising in contributor countries and help build trust with recipient countries. 

As a feasibility study, this paper attempts to outline the importance of assessing international climate finance contributions while describing the difficulties in arriving at universally agreed measurements and indicators for assessment. In many cases, data are neither readily available nor complete, and there is no consensus on what should be included. A number of indicators are proposed in this study as a starting point with which to analyze voluntary contributions, but in some cases their methodologies are not complete, and further research is required for a robust measurement tool to be created.

Read the full report »

       

Achieving global goals for poverty reduction,
economic growth and environmental health
will require widespread innovation and implementation
of new and appropriate “green growth”
technologies. Establishing a sufficiently large suite
of innovative technology options, suitable to diverse
economies, and at the urgent pace required will involve
unprecedented innovation activity not only
from developed regions, but also from new clusters
and enterprises in emerging economies and least developed
countries. By linking national governments,
the private sector and the international community,
international cooperation can contribute substantively
in five green innovation priority areas: 

1. Cultivating innovation capacity and ecosystems
   in least developed countries (LDCs); 
2. Facilitating and strengthening existing entrepreneurial
   cultures; 
3. Significantly scaling up research and development
   (R&D) activities through competitive grants;
4. Encouraging financing for large-scale demonstration
   and deployment of complex but transformative
   new technologies; and
5. De-risking entrepreneurial investments and
   stimulating intellectual property (IP) sharing. 

In this brief we describe several ways that international
cooperation can play a critical role in facilitating this
transformative process and outline six existing institutional
structures that have been invoked as possible examples
for scaling up to foster green innovation more
broadly. Finally, we suggest several policy recommendations
that are feasible in the near term.

Read the full paper »

       

INTRODUCTION

We are at a key moment in the evolution of our global approach to the challenges of development, environment and the transition to a green economy. This year marked the 20th anniversary of the U.N. Conference on Environment and Development, also known as the Rio Earth Summit, and the 40th anniversary of the first international meeting to address environment and development in Stockholm. Despite the ambitious and well-intentioned aspirations of these meetings, over 1.3 billion people still do not have access to electricity; 2.5 billion people live without basic sanitation; and 4 billion people live on less than $9 per day. Furthermore, global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are likely to exceed the levels that would be needed to maintain the climate at no more than 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels and some climate impacts are already being felt, with the greatest vulnerabilities in the developing world.

Innovations in green technology represent transformational approaches to these and others of the world’s thorniest development and environment challenges. Innovation for green growth has the potential to tackle three challenges simultaneously: encouraging widespread development and poverty reduction; creating new and more vibrant economies based on clean technologies; and securing an increasingly greener world. Importantly, this kind of transformational approach to addressing global development goals through green technologies will require support for innovation across all development contexts. Establishing a sufficiently large suite of technological options, suitable to all economies and at the urgent pace required, will involve unprecedented innovation activity not only from developed regions, but also from new clusters and enterprises in emerging economies and least developed countries. Encouragingly, widespread economic development has increased global capacity for research and development, and created a new tier of emerging innovators in developing countries—and through additional action, we argue that these gains might be bolstered, and additional innovation areas can be encouraged in new regions.

Tackling such challenges as climate change, energy access, environmental degradation, sanitation and water availability while achieving economic and development goals will require unusually creative approaches. The engagement of global innovative capacity depends on effective national innovation systems, and in many places these could potentially benefit from international coordination and support. It will require new and profitable business models, novel approaches to financing, and policy innovations within our national and global institutions.

In this analysis, we seek to elucidate the areas for new international partnerships or cooperation that could be most effective in this transformation. We do this first by reviewing the components of a successful innovation “ecosystem.” We then present and analyze a large set of existing international initiatives that aim to support green growth, and identify strengths and gaps in the existing infrastructure. We assess the needs and pragmatic constraints on international institutions, and recommend an integrated, four-part approach to spur innovation partnerships in developing countries. We conclude that, by linking national governments, the private sector, and the international community, a collaborative effort can make concrete improvements in four key green innovation areas:

• Cultivating technical knowledge in green technologies;
• Facilitating existing entrepreneurial cultures;
• Providing new models and opportunities for financing and intellectual property sharing; and
• Large scale financing for demonstration and deployment of complex but transformative new technologies.

       

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Green Climate Fund’s (GCF) Private Sector Facility can enhance the likelihood of achieving its’ goals of scale-up, transformation and leverage by including individual voting members in its board who bring private sector skills and experience. This would build on growing precedent in the boards of other global funds, as well as in national funds in developing countries.

Benefits of this inclusion can include greater balancing of views from both the private and public sectors. This can in turn protect the public interest while enhancing innovation and leverage, greater cost and value consciousness, and speedier decision-making. However there may be risks including; potential conflicts of interest; those which are associated with constituency-based selections; lack of knowledge of developing country conditions; and lack of trust. While these risks can undermine the effectiveness of engagement, they can be managed through careful design and selection processes.

Finally, while private sector engagement in the governance of institutions which manage public funds is becoming more common in a number of multilateral and national settings, this engagement is not alone sufficient to ensure overall fund effectiveness. Broader lessons from fund governance experiences will need to be factored into the operation of the Green Climate Fund as well as its Private Sector Facility.

The GCF Board, in its design of the Private Sector Facility, should:

• Create dedicated private sector board seats with full voting authority.
• Design rigorous selection criteria and processes to ensure private sector board members are independent and selected on the basis of individual skills and experience, not by constituency.
• Design selection criteria that ensure that at least half of the private sector seats are held by individuals who bring deep experience from markets in the developing countries that the facility will be serving and that they have previous experience with companies or organizations which operate principally in a developing country or region.
• Encourage governments to nominate public sector board members who have private sector experience and skills.
• Balance the number of private sector board seats with those from the public sector, with somewhat more public sector seats to alleviate concerns about adherence to the Facility’s public sector mission.
• Manage conflicts of interests by limiting participation on private sector board seats to individuals who bring private sector skills, but are be no longer engaged in transactions or employed by potential users of the funds.
• Adopt transparent rules for the disclosure of decisions, and for recusal as needed for all Board members.
• Develop a set of complementary measures to broaden private sector engagement. These could include engaging the private sector as fund managers, investment advisors, advisors on technical working groups, technical advisors to funding recipients, and co-financiers.

       

How do the climate policies of President Obama and candidate Romney differ? Does political will exist to implement a U.S. carbon tax? On June 13, Brookings expert Katherine Sierra took your questions and comments in a live web chat moderated by Vivyan Tran of POLITICO.

12:29 Vivyan Tran: Welcome everyone, let’s get started!

12:30 Comment From Anne: How does the United States regain its status as a leader on climate change?

12:32 Katherine Sierra: The United States can regain its leadership role in climate change if it is ready to take decisive action in setting a price on carbon — while a cap-and-trade system is off the table politically, a carbon tax, linked to deficit reduction, could hold the key. But unfortunately, this is unlikely in the near term. So, it will be up to states, cities and coalitions of actors (business, civil society and local governments) for the time being. At least we can make movement on showing that through innovation, a new pathway is feasible.

12:32 Comment From Elizabeth, R: Why do you think the American public lacks a real urgency on climate change? Are individuals just preoccupied with other issues like the economy, health care etc?

12:36 Katherine Sierra: The impacts of climate change are long term, but the costs (at least the transition costs) are short term. Our political leaders have not been able to provide a narrative that builds on the science and navigates the trade-offs and opportunities in a compelling way. Indeed, the opposite has happened, climate change has been a polarizing issue. Will the impacts of climate — more and more costly disasters — change the dynamic? Will this happen in time to actually allow emission reductions to reverse course?

12:36 Comment From Erica: Will the 2012 presidential election prove a milestone in U.S. climate policy? Do Romney and Obama represent two fundamentally different views on the environment and clean tech?

12:40 Katherine Sierra: While the election will be important, and the two candidates have different approaches and views, climate action in the United States will be constrained in the near term whatever the outcome. A second Obama term will face the same political constraints with a divided electorate. Fiscal constraints and jobs will also reduce the President’s ability to take bold action. A Romney presidency will likely move to weaken United States leadership in international negotiations. However, beyond the rhetoric, he may buy into a strategy that focuses on private-sector led innovation, albeit not billed as a climate policy.

12:40 Comment From Erica, D: Given renewed fears about a global recession, can investments in clean tech or green energy support growth in both developed and developing nations?

12:45 Katherine Sierra: Many countries and sub-national governments are thinking through strategies that support a fundamentally different clean- or green-economy paradigm. An example is Korea which used its stimulus policies to drive clean energy investments, and is now focusing on a broader low-carbon, green economy as a way to drive growth and jobs. City leaders are also focusing on how they can harness innovation to improve their competitiveness, locally and globally. For developing countries, international support to help them build innovation systems and to leverage private capital to drive growth should be a priority. In the United States, placing a price on carbon, recycling some of the funds to support research and development, could be an important move.

12:45 Comment From Carmen: Has the Obama administration really progressed on international climate that much more than where we were at the end of the Bush administration?

12:49 Katherine Sierra: The Obama administration has been successful in changing the terms of the international debate in the climate negotiations. Coming from the near debacle at the Copenhagen climate talks through Cancun and Durban, there is now recognition that all parties — not just historical emitters like the US, but also new, large emitters, like China — will need to take action if the global problem is to be solved. So, the new approaches, which rely on pledge-and-review mechanisms, are a first start. So is the new language agreed to in Durban that calls for a new agreement with legal force covering all actors. While the large emerging economies still push back on this formulation, the stage has been set. However, returning to the first question in this chat, what is still needed is action on the part of the United States, along with China, to break the log jam.

12:49 Comment From Amos: Do you think that a carbon tax could alleviate some of the economic stress on the US? How so?

12:53 Katherine Sierra: My Brookings colleague Ted Gayer has produced an excellent paper outlining the ways in which a carbon tax could both contribute to deficit reduction and climate and pollution control. He posits a three-pronged strategy: Price environmental externalities (e.g., GHG emissions) through a carbon tax; use the revenue to reduce the deficit; and eliminate redundant and costly environmental regulations that were put in as “second-best” solutions to the emissions problem. Pricing carbon will also send the appropriate signal to innovators and investors, which should help spur technological advances.

12:53 Comment From Chris: Aren’t the short-term costs of climate change just as real and important? Sometimes it can be difficult to see the importance of climate change legislation when so many people’s livelihoods depend on the energy industry — including fossil fuels. Are efforts to reduce climate change worth sacrificing people’s jobs? Their financial security and well-being?

12:57 Katherine Sierra: Agree that the short-term costs are real and important. This is so not just here in the United States, but also in developing countries where leaders are concerned first and foremost about meeting the poverty alleviation and growth objectives of their people. But, we also know that many of the elements of a climate strategy (improvements in energy efficiency, new forms of transportation) are cost effective and will bring benefits now that outweigh the costs…so these should be implemented now.
To build a climate consensus in this country, there will need to be strategies that recognize the transition costs to those industries and people that will be impacted in the short run.

12:57 Comment From Sarah: Could innovations in climate change policy come from the states, rather than federal mandates from above?

1:00 Katherine Sierra: Innovations are coming from the states, and from the cities. But, as mayors from the U.S. and abroad who met in Chicago in May stated: The greener the national policy framework, the easier it will be for cities to meet their own challenges.
Over the next few years I expect that we will see important, real-time innovations coming from the bottom up….but ultimately, there will need to be a national (and international) policy framework if these are to be scaled up to the level needed to confront the climate challenge.

1:00 Vivyan Tran: Thanks for the questions everyone. See you next week!

       

On June 11, the Campaign 2012 project at Brookings held a discussion on climate change and energy, the seventh in a series of forums that identify and address the 12 most critical issues facing the next president. Darren Samuelsohn of POLITICO moderated a panel discussion with Brookings experts Ted Gayer, Katherine Sierra and Charles Ebinger, who presented recommendations to the next president.

After the program, panelists took questions from the audience.

You can follow the conversation on this event on Twitter using the hashtag #BIClimate or on our @BICampaign2012 Twitter feed.

Download papers from the event:

• Linking Climate Policy to Fiscal and Environmental Reform, by Ted Gayer 
• Five Major Energy Problems the Next President Has to Face, by Charles Ebinger and Govinda Avasarala 
• World Leadership for an International Problem, by Katherine Sierra
  
   

Campaign 2012: Twelve Independent Ideas for Improving American Public Policy is an indispensable guide to the key questions facing White House hopefuls in 2012.

       

Editor’s Note: For Campaign 2012, Ted Gayer wrote a policy brief proposing ideas for the next president on climate change. The following paper is a response to Gayer’s piece from Katherine Sierra. Charles Ebinger and Govinda Avasarala also prepared a response identifying five critical challenges the next president must address to help secure the nation’s energy future.

Ted Gayer presents a compelling analysis of the derailment of a comprehensive climate policy after 2008. While acknowledging that revisiting the issue in the next administration is a long shot, he provides an appealing pathway that couples a price on carbon with fiscal and environmental reform. While I agree with much of his analysis, I would add a note of caution: there will be significant transition costs; some industries and communities will be losers, at least in the short term.

Many of the elements of previous attempts at a comprehensive climate policy that Gayer decries as inefficient were included precisely because of the political imperative to address these costs, and this imperative will not go away. For instance, a carbon price is regressive, and reducing marginal tax rates will not address the impact of these costs on low-income earners. Gayer also points to U.S. industry concerns about the competitiveness impacts of the proposed cap-and-trade bill on the so-called trade-exposed industry. These same concerns will arise from a carbon tax. Instead of demanding free allowances, however, these industries will seek tax exemptions.

I also agree that setting a price on carbon—in Gayer’s formula, through a carbon tax—is the best way to spur action on climate change. However, non-price barriers and market failures will still arise and could stall the introduction of new technologies that may founder in the well-recognized “valley of death” between research and development and full commercialization. Government policy and public-private partnerships to address these market failures may still be needed, as will public investment in research and development.

Setting a price on carbon will not only make U.S. action on climate change stronger and more effective, but it will also allow the country to regain some of its leadership role in the international arena of climate change. The United States will be in a stronger position to get concrete results from the new formulas for international cooperation that have evolved over the past few international conferences on climate change. These new formulas aim to spur deeper action by all major greenhouse gas emitters, including those from rapidly industrializing countries like China, which is now the largest source of new emissions.

While negotiations from the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have advanced at a glacial pace, there has been movement in recasting the global response so as to recognize that the world is no longer strictly divided between historical emitters and developing countries. The climate change meetings in Copenhagen in 2009 and in Cancun in 2010 resulted in voluntary commitments to reduce emissions from the advanced and rapidly industrializing countries now responsible for the majority of emissions growth. However, these pledges do not go far enough to ensure the internationally agreed-upon goal of maintaining the global temperature rise at no more than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels.

This was reconfirmed at the 2011 climate change talks in Durban. But in an unexpected move, international climate negotiators agreed to a process to move beyond the voluntary approach agreed to in Cancun to some type of agreement with legal force. The agreed language is intentionally vague, stating that countries should “launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument or an agreed outcome with legal force under the [UNFCCC] applicable to all parties.” For the United States, the key phrase is that the outcome should be “applicable to all parties.” While this is sure to be disputed in future discussions, the language is another “thin edge of the wedge” toward including China and other new emitters in future agreements. China must be included both to reach the climate goal and to get political support for more aggressive levels of emission reductions in the United States. Strong action from the next administration would allow it to call for deeper emission reduction pledges by all major emitters, while also joining Europe and countries like Australia that have been carrying the leadership banner in the absence of the United States.

The next administration will also need to lead on policies that help developing countries meet their own emission reduction pledges. It should, in addition, support the costs of adapting to a new climate reality. As part of the agreements at Copenhagen and Cancun, the developed countries pledged $100 billion a year in funding by 2020 to support efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change in developing countries. Some of the funding would likely be channeled through the Green Climate Fund, which was also agreed upon in Durban.

The sources of this financing are still unclear. While most of the proceeds from a carbon tax would, under Gayer’s strategy, be recycled to fund deficit reduction or a reduction in marginal tax rates in the United States, some should go toward U.S. obligations to fund part of the $100 billion global pledge. Given the deep fiscal challenges in the United States, this will of course be resisted, and public funding will likely be tight. This means that finding ways of using public funds to leverage private sector finance, particularly for mitigation, will be critical for the next administration. The Green Climate Fund may be one vehicle to move this agenda forward, but it will not be in place for some time. In addition, developing countries have only a weak appetite for using some money from the Green Climate Fund to catalyze private investment. So the next administration should try to leverage private finance through the Overseas Private Investment Corporation and multilateral vehicles such as the multilateral development banks, which will be more adept at testing new modalities for this purpose.

Finally, the next administration can project leadership even beyond the formal setting of the UNFCCC negotiations through technology partnerships. Partnerships on technology development and deployment—such as those developed under the Clean Energy Ministerial, which brings together ministers from over twenty industrial and rapidly industrializing nations—should continue and broaden out to a wider set of countries, focusing not just on mitigation but also on adaptation.