Keys to Climate Action: How Developing Countries Could Drive Global Success and Local Prosperity

To set a more robust global path to net-zero emissions by 2050, the world needs to pay greater attention to the needs of emerging markets and developing economies (EMDEs), even when holding aside the special case of China. Over the coming several decades, no part of the world will play a greater role in both experiencing and affecting global climate change outcomes than EMDEs themselves. They need greater international support to tackle growth-enhancing sustainable development strategies.

In Keys to Climate Action, twenty-five authors describe new economic narratives and global actions that can help catalyze progress toward inclusive, sustainable, and resilient growth in EMDEs. The volume begins with the stark reality of climate change’s devastating consequences already hindering economic development around the world. It underscores the need for urgent investments in adaptation, resilience, and nature to avoid development setbacks while paying heed to the world’s narrow window for climate action. It requires empathy for many developing countries’ profound energy conundrum: a tension between the need to expand access for people who need it most while facing pressures to pursue low-carbon opportunities, often in the face of local political and financing headwinds. It implies practical urgency in tackling the broken threads of the international financing system for climate and development.

The volume brings together a cross-section of distinguished academics and leading policy voices from a variety of developing country geographies and contexts. It presents perspectives on country-specific climate and development challenges and opportunities, followed by broader case studies focused on regional issues and the Vulnerable Twenty Group. The final chapter focuses on systemic issues in financing development and climate-driven prosperity.