How Can We Unlock Climate Progress in Difficult Times? Leading Experts Weigh In

One thing is clear when it comes to halting climate change: More of the same won’t be enough.

We’ve seen real, rapid progress in areas like renewables and electric transport — changes that were unimaginable a decade ago. But the curve isn’t bending. Emissions are still climbing, temperatures are warming, and fossil fuel use continues to expand. Every major indicator of global climate progress remains off track to meet 2030 targets.

Meanwhile, the context for climate action has shifted. Rising geopolitical tensions, a changing world order and a tightening of public finance are shrinking climate agendas and constraining international climate diplomacy.

It’s time to break from business as usual. Current approaches cannot keep up with the scale of the climate crisis. But what will it take to unleash meaningful change?

Allied for Climate Transformation put this thorny question to a panel of leading experts. Moderated by WRI President and CEO Ani Dasgupta, the discussion featured Mary Robinson, Former President, Republic of Ireland and member of the Elders; Hon. Ralph Regenvanu, Minister for Climate Change, Vanuatu; Rachel Kyte, Special Representative for Climate, U.K.; María Fernanda Torres Penagos, Director of Climate Change and Risk Management, Colombia; and Mohamed Adow, Director, Power Shift Africa.

They offered several concrete suggestions for how we can unlock greater climate progress in line with the needs of climate-vulnerable countries, even in these difficult times.

1) Move Beyond Familiar Narratives 

Featured Expert: 

Ani Dasgupta, President & CEO, WRI

Opening the discussion, Dasgupta underscored the urgency of the next five years and the need for fresh approaches to climate action. “As we enter the second half of this critical decade, this is a moment to move beyond familiar narratives,” says Dasgupta. “Global temperatures continue to break records, and crossing the 1.5 degree C threshold is no longer a distant warning.”

Dasgupta made clear that while progress so far has laid important ground, the next phase will require scaling what works. Exponential growth in areas like clean energy and electric vehicles shows that rapid transformation is possible. The challenge now is to translate these advances into broader, economy-wide changes that can bend emissions downward while benefiting people and nature.

Dasgupta warned that the stakes are high, but so is the opportunity to act with purpose and urgency. “As current efforts fall short, climate impacts intensify, debt mounts and inequality hardens. For vulnerable countries in the Global South, this is a race against time to build resilience — not just to survive, but to thrive.”

So, what is the way forward? As Dasgupta put it, “this isn’t about whether more action is needed — that is obvious.” The real question, he argues, “is where today’s climate playbook is falling short and what different decisions or partnerships could genuinely change direction — not through incremental tweaks, but through game-changing focus and action.”

2) Use International Law to Turn Climate Science into Enforceable Action

Featured Expert: 

Hon. Ralph Regenvanu, Minister for Climate Change, Meteorology & Geo-Hazards, Energy, Environment and Disaster Management, Vanuatu

Minister Regenvanu framed climate leadership as a matter of legal obligation and accountability. As he put it: “We are not asking for sympathy. We are insisting on integrity. Act in accordance with the science. Act in accordance with international law.” 

Recent developments in the legal sphere reinforce that position. International courts have begun to fundamentally shift the legal terrain for climate action. Advisory opinions issued by the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea (2024), the Inter-American Court of Human Rights (2025) and the International Court of Justice (2025) clarified that states have legal obligations to prevent climate harm, protect human rights and take precautionary measures against climate change. These rulings bolster what climate-vulnerable states on the frontline, like Vanuatu, have long argued: Governments in high-emitting countries cannot continue supporting fossil fuel expansion while claiming climate responsibility and leadership.

While advisory opinions are non-binding, Hon. Regenvanu pointed to how they could catalyze change at the national level. “I believe it’s in the realm of domestic courts where the ICJ advisory opinion will have the most transformative effect — citizens forcing their own governments to make changes in law and policy through legal action. Almost immediately after the advisory opinion was handed down in July last year, we saw it starting to be referenced in litigation all over the world.”

Evidence of this shift is already visible. In January 2026, a court in the Netherlands ordered the government to develop a legally binding adaptation plan to protect residents of the Dutch Caribbean island of Bonaire from climate change impacts, such as sea-level rise and extreme heat. The decision drew directly on international advisory opinions and the Paris Agreement. In South Africa, a high court ruling recently overturned the government’s authorization of new offshore oil and gas drilling. It referenced the ICJ Advisory Opinion just one week after its publication — signaling how rapidly international climate law is being taken up in domestic legal challenges.

3) Reform Fiscal Policy to Match the Need for Climate Resilience

Featured Expert: 

Rachel Kyte, Special Representative for Climate, U.K.

“There is a drying up of public finance across the world,” said Rachel Kyte, who warned that shrinking public budgets are colliding with escalating climate risks. Kyte pointed to growing recognition among U.K. statutory bodies and oversight institutions that, despite contracting funding, climate-related risks are becoming fiscally unavoidable. “The cost of our own adaptation is going to be extraordinary,” she said. “Government is going to have to respond.”

This, Kyte argues, requires a fundamental shift in fiscal thinking. “We’re now in a world where fiscal policy has to take into account the threats to resilience.”

Kyte called for the diversification of public revenue sources, “finding new creative ways” to fund climate resilience, such as levies and taxes, alongside regulatory reforms in financial markets. She emphasized the need to ensure that resources flow directly into adaptation and resilience.

When it comes to private capital flows, Kyte claims, “one of the big problems is that the private finance [is still going into] the developed world. We’re not galvanizing it into emerging markets and developing economies” — those that most urgently need international finance.

Part of this is due to perceived investment risk. However, data from multilateral development banks shows that investments in emerging markets perform well. This reinforces Kyte’s argument that the constraints are not purely financial, but structural and perceptual.

As for governments, the long-term gains of investing in resilience can outweigh the upfront costs. “There are things we know that we need to do,” Kyte said, and acting on them now will be cheaper than “kicking the can down the road.”

4) Build a Coalition of the Willing for the Fossil Fuel Transition

Featured Expert: 

María Fernanda Torres Penagos, Director of Climate Change and Risk Management, Colombia

Last year’s UN climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil put unprecedented attention on fossil fuels. Yet consensus remained elusive. Hopes that countries would commit to roadmaps to end fossil fuel use were ultimately dashed after strong pushback from petrostates.

Momentum is now shifting outside the formal UN negotiations. In April 2026, Colombia and the Netherlands will co-host the first-ever international conference focused explicitly on transitioning away from fossil fuels. Instead of the traditional focus on emissions targets, the conference sets out to tackle fossil fuel dependency and the practical implications of phaseout head-on, without destabilizing national economies or leaving workers and communities behind.

As Torres Penagos explained, “Its objective is to establish a permanent international platform oriented toward implementing a transition beyond fossil fuels — one that accompanies a coalition of countries willing to move forward, respects different national circumstances and capacities, and ensures continuity through future additions.”

What distinguishes this effort, Torres Penagos argues, is its focus on implementation and continuity. By convening a coalition of the willing, the conference aims to build trust, surface practical transition pathways, and sustain cooperation on issues such as finance and social protection. If successful, it could help shift the fossil fuel conversation away from political gridlock and being “confined exclusively to COP negotiation cycles” — instead consolidating it “as a stable pillar of international climate cooperation.”

5) Move Forward with Those Ready to Act

Featured Expert:

Mohamed Adow, Director, Power Shift Africa

The initiative by Colombia and the Netherlands reflects a clear-eyed response to today’s fragmented world: Waiting for universal agreement is no longer viable.

As Allied for Climate Transformation consortium partner Mohamed Adow emphasized, “it's obviously going to be difficult to get the buy-in of all major emitters, but leadership doesn't have to wait for unanimity. History shows us that progress often starts with coalitions of willing countries. When a critical mass moves, that sets a standard, that shifts finance, that scales clean technologies, and others tend to follow. Because that’s the economics of change. We are already seeing this with renewables, which are now cheaper than fossil fuels in much of the world.”

Adow argues that “the transition away from fossil fuels is no longer a fringe issue.” Early movers are already reshaping global energy markets and public perception. The task now is to intentionally organize that momentum through coalitions of the willing to continue pushing for “a fair and equitable transition.”

At the same time, coalitions cannot replace multilateralism. “For climate-vulnerable countries, multilateral forums are the only avenues through which we act collectively,” said Adow. These spaces remain indispensable for advancing priorities such as adaptation and loss and damage finance, and for operating within a framework of shared responsibility. Crucially, they are among the few forums where climate-vulnerable countries have a seat at the table. In an increasingly fragmented geopolitical system, maintaining strong multilateral channels is essential to preserve vulnerable countries’ leverage, hold major emitters to account, and sustain a system capable of catalyzing transitions at scale.

6) Make Climate Action a Human and Nature-Centered Endeavor

Featured Expert: 

Mary Robinson, Former President, Republic of Ireland; Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Member of The Elders

Many world leaders have highlighted the instability of global financial and climate systems, describing “ a rupture in the global order ” that now shapes nearly every serious climate conversation. Within this landscape, Mary Robinson offered a different framing, one that unites rather than fractures. She called to “make the climate narrative human, to speak from the heart.” This means leading through action anchored in human rights, justice and our shared relationship with nature.

“To tackle this crisis, we must make this a human endeavor. Let’s work together to preserve our rules-based order based on human rights, and within that, have much more focus on what we really need to do — which is to phase out fossil fuels with [a] just transition and safeguard and regenerate nature. But we also need coalitions of the willing who are serious about the values that underpin the rules-based order.

“That means human rights. It means the right to a healthy environment. It means protecting the gains we have already made — and refusing to let them slip away. We can do this if we speak the language of the heart, if we show what is truly at risk. We could lose the world’s coral reefs in less than a decade. We could lose the Amazon not long after that.

“These realities shock people, but they should also move us to act. This does not have to happen. We have the political will — if we change where the money flows, if we shift leadership and mindsets. We can act, and we must.”

This is not only a moral imperative, she argues, but the pathway to securing a livable future at a moment when the window for course correction is narrowing.

Robinson reminds us that a better world is not out of reach. Even when the “glass may not be half full, there may be only a tiny bit in it — you work with that. You collaborate, you grow it. You do what you can do, and you work as much as possible in community with others. And that is the way you bring hope.”