WRI Insights

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.

Between 2001 and 2012, Latin America and the Caribbean [lost 36 million hectares](http://faostat3.fao.org/home/E) of forest and grassland to agricultural expansion, and nearly half of the region's greenhouse gas emissions are the result of land-use change, forestry, and agriculture. So there’s a clear solution to curbing climate change in the LAC region—[restore life](http://www.wri.org/blog/2014/05/restoration-it%E2%80%99s-about-more-just-trees) to its degraded landscapes. That's where Initiative 20x20 comes in.

Coverage of Japan’s coal funding has sparked an important debate about the role of international climate finance in facilitating the transition to a low-carbon economy.

In fast-urbanizing China, nearly 90 percent of coastal cities face some degree of water scarcity and roughly 300 million rural residents lack access to clean water. To quench the country’s chronic thirst, the Chinese government has turned to desalination, aiming to produce as much as 3 million cubic meters of desalinated water daily by 2020, up from today’s 0.77 million cubic meter.

Making the transition to a low-carbon, climate-resilient economy is going to take a lot of investment, and the limited budgets of the public sector can’t tackle it alone. But by targeting their support, governments can create incentives for significant private investment into climate activities; in other words, they can “mobilize” private investment.

The latest climate science shows us what needs to happen to global emissions to have a likely chance of limiting warming to 2°C, but how do we translate these global numbers to the national level? How can a country design a contribution that is aligned with science when the 2 degree goal will be determined by the actions by all countries?

As delegates gather at COP 20 in Lima, it’s a critical moment to think about how countries can build resilience to these impacts. Negotiators are currently at work on creating an international climate agreement by COP 21 in Paris in 2015—they have an opportunity to craft one that accelerates action on adaptation and makes life better for vulnerable people around the world.

As national leaders prepare plans to curb greenhouse gas emissions at COP20, they can look to sustainable transport for win-win solutions that curb emissions while generating jobs, boosting economic growth, and improving public health.

Imagine that we have the chance to cut greenhouse gas emissions, boost household incomes and increase crop yields, while making vulnerable areas more resilient to severe weather and improving the lives of people in some of the world’s poorest regions. The fact is, we could do all this and more by restoring the world’s degraded landscapes to productive, sustainable use.

The U.S. EPA has proposed standards to limit power sector emissions, which, once adopted, are expected to reduce carbon pollution from power plants by 25 percent by 2020. But as we recently noted in our public comment on the proposal, increasingly cost-effective efficiency and renewable energy opportunities mean that the EPA can and should require even greater emissions reductions.