Progress on the Sustainable Development goals, including a focus on the urban and the cross-cutting theme of climate change has translated into modest improvements in the international governance of these issues. Dovetailing the development and climate change agendas in particular opens up avenues to deal with the multiple stressors faced by vulnerable communities as well as the opportunity to capitalize on co-benefits between these two, fundamentally interrelated, sets of priorities. The Green Climate Fund negotiated as part of the UNFCCC signals the potential to address the underlying development concerns (poverty, education, sanitation, food security) that deepen communities’ vulnerability to climate change. It is, however, only the first step towards a transfer of funds from developed to developing nations that adequately addresses the scale of the climate change risks in vulnerable regions.

Despite this progress inadequate attention is being paid to the climate/conflict nexus, as evidenced by the ongoing drought, conflict, and refugee crisis in Syria.

The recent deal between the US and China on emissions reductions was significant both in its substance and in its implications for the upcoming negotiations in Paris. This places increased pressure on other large emitters to make significant multi-lateral or bi-lateral progress towards greenhouse gas reductions. It also potentially staves off a measure of future economic uncertainty, by stimulating a shift towards decreased reliance on fossil fuels. Recent moves towards reducing or removing fossil fuel subsidies have a similarly transformative potential, but the federal election in Canada and the recent political shifts in Australia translate into uncertainty about the extent to which large emitters will authentically take on this task of reduced subsidies (i.e. with the various Canadian political parties making very different promises in this regard). National and sub-national efforts add additional momentum, including the province of Ontario’s plans to be a part of Quebec’s cap and trade system, the Dutch ruling that the government must cut carbon emissions by 25% in five years to protect its citizens. This latter decision sets a precedent for a legal approach to addressing climate change and supports the notion that each nation has a responsibility to manage this risk.