Understanding that climate change is an economic opportunity. Climate action has investment potential in the trillions of dollars, and the ability to ramp up innovation, clean industries, and green jobs. Turning to women as climate leaders. Women are disproportionately vulnerable to climate change, but if fully empowered, they can be effective climate advocates as policymakers and community leaders. Deploying bots as a force for good. Internet bots, a technology better known for dividing public opinion, have the potential to spur climate activism at scale.
Result in $26 trillion in economic benefits worldwide through 2030. Generate over 65 million new low-carbon jobs in 2030, equivalent to today’s entire workforces of the U.K. and Egypt combined. Avoid over 700,000 premature deaths from air pollution in 2030. Generate, through just subsidy reform and carbon pricing, an estimated US$2.8 trillion in government revenues per year in 2030—equivalent to the total GDP of India today—funds that can be used to invest in other public priorities or reduce distorting taxes. By a shift to more sustainable forms of agriculture combined with strong forest protection, deliver potentially more than US $2 trillion per year of economic benefits, generating millions of jobs, improving food security—including by reducing food loss and waste—and delivering over a third of the climate change solution. By restoring natural capital, especially our forests, degraded lands and coastal zones, strengthen our defenses and boost adaptation to climate impacts, from more extreme weather patterns to sea-level rise.
12 regions – including Catalonia, Lombardy, Scotland, and Washington State, representing over 80 million people and over 5 percent of global GDP will have 100 per cent zero emission public fleets by 2030. 26 cities with 140 million people are committed to buy only zero emission buses starting in 2025 and creating zero emission areas in their cities starting in 2030. IKEA Group will transition to EV in Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, Paris, and Shanghai by 2020 – to reach 100% zero emissions for last mile home delivery. More than 3.5 million additional zero emission vehicle charging points will be installed by 2025, and a goal for transport hydrogen to be zero-emissions by 2030 was launched This includes nearly 150 major global companies such as Tata Motors and Sony who have joined the RE100 initiative: collective annual revenues of these companies total well over US $2.75 trillion and their annual electricity demand is higher than that of Poland. Over 30 energy intensive industry and property players have set smart energy and net zero carbon buildings targets through EP100. Nearly a fifth of Fortune Global 500 companies have now committed to set science-based emissions reduction targets including big emitters like India’s Dalmia Cement As one example, Levi Strauss & Co. has an approved Science Based Target for a 90 per cent reduction in emissions in all owned-and-operated facilities and 40 per cent reduction in its supply chain by 2025. Collectively these more than 480 companies represent $10 trillion of the global economy, equivalent to the value of the NASDAQ stock exchange. Signatories include several established climate leaders: Akamai Technologies, Arm, Autodesk, Bloomberg, BT, Cisco Systems, Ericsson, HP, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lyft, Nokia, Salesforce, Supermicro, Symantec, Tech Mahindra, Uber, Vigilent, VMware, WeWork, Workday, and Companies Autodesk, Safaricom and Unilever became the first to join a new Pledge for a Just Transition to Decent Jobs. They pledged to only buy from renewable energy providers that uphold fundamental workers’ rights including social protections and wage guarantees. These actions alone will lead to a 2.5 percent cut of annual global greenhouse gas emissions and the avoidance of 12 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050. Mayors of over 70 of the world’s key cities reaffirmed their commitment to delivering on the highest ambitions of the Paris Agreement, namely to keep a global temperature rise to below 1.5℃. . During the maiden voyage of the San Francisco Bay Area’s first plug-in hybrid electric ferry, Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. signed a comprehensive package of bills aimed at dramatically reducing carbon emissions by boosting the number of zero-emission vehicles and charging stations in California and getting dirty cars and trucks off the road. Meanwhile Starbucks, as one example, announced that by 2025 the company will have 10,000 Greener Stores globally, encompassing existing stores and new stores and renovations.
Over 100 global supply chain actors including supermarket chain Tesco and investors–managing over US $5.6 trillion–pledged to work with a variety of organizations to halt deforestation and native vegetation loss in the Cerrado, Brazil. Walmart announced a new platform to identify high-risk jurisdictions and source palm oil and paper and pulp from jurisdictions with no deforestation. As an example, Unilever – an anchor partner and supplier to Walmart – will support farmer certification as well as restoration in the Sugut, Kinabatangan and Tawau river basins in Sabah, Malaysia. Ecuador’s Inter-institutional Committee on Sustainable Palm Oil seeks to balance economic growth, productivity, and forest conservation and preservation. To achieve this, the Committee will work towards increasing production of palm oil on existing cultivation areas, by implementing sustainable agricultural practices based on national legislation and international standards, including the Roundtable for Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO); thus, decreasing pressure on remaining forests in the country and strengthening the capacities of smallholder producers on sustainable management. These combined actions will contribute to Ecuador’s advancement in the fight against deforestation, using a jurisdictional sectoral approach, with a vision towards reducing and eliminating deforestation from palm oil production in the Amazon by 2025, as well as achieving zero deforestation from the sector by 2030, nation-wide Through the Pacific Coast Collaborative, states and cities on the United States’ West Coast committed to reduce food loss and waste by 50% by 2030, a commitment with the potential to reduce 25 million tons of GHG emissions per year from the often-overlooked food sector. The Global Environment Facility announced $500 million in funding to drive improved land use and forest conservation. Nine of the world’s leading philanthropic foundations announced their intent to commit at least $459 million through 2022 to the protection, restoration and expansion of forests and lands worldwide—the announcement underlined indigenous peoples’ and traditional communities’ collective land rights and resource management. Coral Vita announced it would be collaborating with Mote Marine Lab and Gates Coral Lab to commercialize innovative, resiliency-driven, and super-fast growing methods of ‘coral farming’ to replace dead and dying ones in the Caribbean. The pilot will be in Grand Bahama and then extended to other countries in the region and the world. An initial $1 million public-private partnership between the office of US Senator Brian Shatz of Hawaii and NOAA, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation and Marc and Lynne Benioff was announced to support monitoring and research at the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. CDPQ, Canada’s second largest pension fund has, for example, committed to increase its low-carbon investments by 50% by 2020, representing more than US$6.2 billion in new investment, and pledged to reduce the carbon intensity of its portfolio by 25% by 2025. PKA, Denmark’s labor market pension fund manager, announced it plans to increase its investments in low-carbon climate solutions to 10 percent of its assets. APG, the Dutch pension fund manager, announced it would no longer be investing in any coal related infrastructure going forward. New York City announced it would be doubling its investments in clean energy and climate solutions to $4 billion over the next three years. The Green Bond Pledge announced founding signatories including the City of Mexico, Luxembourg Green Exchange and SFPUC who join the state treasurers of California, New Mexico and Rhode Island; some major cities including the City of San Francisco; Australian pension fund LGS and two financial firms —which together should spur the goal of seeing US $ 1 trillion-worth of green bonds issued by end 2020. A Global Green Bond Partnership, (GGBP) backed by the World Bank, International Finance Corporation, Amundi and major climate finance and sustainability groups was launched with the aim of supporting and assisting sub-national and corporate green bond issuance. 42 financial institutions gathered under the mainstreaming Climate Action in Financial Institutions initiative, representing over $13 trillion in assets, announced a commitment to helping cities, states, and regions finance climate action, including Multilateral Development Banks, members of the International Development Finance Club as well as leading private financial institutions from developing and developed countries.
