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The SDGs and CitiesIPCC offer an unprecedented opportunity for urban transformation, but bold, integrated action to address the constraints imposed by economic, cultural and political dynamics is needed. We move beyond a narrow, technocentric view and identify five key knowledge pathways to catalyse urban transformation.
Transformation is required for cities to fulfil their leadership potential on climate change. Five action pathways can guide them: integrate mitigation and adaptation; coordinate risk reduction and climate adaptation; cogenerate risk information; focus on disadvantaged populations; and improve governance and knowledge networks.
To realize ambitious climate targets, research should focus more on effective ways to encourage rapid and wide-scale changes in climate mitigation actions, and less on understanding climate change beliefs.
With country-specific development objectives and constraints, multiple market failures and limited international transfers, carbon prices do not need to be uniform across countries, but must be part of broader policy packages.
It is increasingly clear that achieving the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 °C will require radical decarbonization, the prospects of which have become closely tied to carbon pricing.
A well-defined relationship between global mean sea-level rise and cumulative carbon emissions can be used to inform policy about emission limits to prevent dangerous and essentially permanent anthropogenic interference with the climate system.
