ABSTRACT
The threat and challenge of climate change demands urgent adaptation and mitigation actions across the globe. Governments and private-sector actors are being called on to contribute efforts to ensure against current and future serious climatic damages while ensuring sustainable economic growth. The December 2015 Paris Agreement concluded under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change marks a critical step in guiding individual and collective actions of States to lead those efforts. 1 The commitments to sustainable development and averting global warming by ensuring that global average temperature increase is limited to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels should shape national viable and transformational low-carbon growth strategies. 2
Realising those strategies requires, among other things, money, power and integrity. The challenge of transforming economies to avoid global warming comes with a heavy price tag. So do the costs of lessening the impact of and coping with the environmental and human damages caused by increased flooding, drought, temperature and sea levels and extreme weather events.
