The first Africa Climate Summit concluded with significant momentum for the continent’s approach to climate diplomacy. For many observers, though, these achievements were overshadowed by concerns over the endorsement of market-based schemes like carbon credits as a way out of the continent’s climate finance quandary.
Even as regular climate diplomacy has resumed between the U.S. and China, officials and observers of both countries have become markedly more pessimistic about the feasibility of carving out a separate lane for climate progress amid rising tensions. That may imperil our chances of a timely energy transition.
As temperatures rise due to global warming, it’s all too easy to see the policy worlds of climate and health as separate and even competing sectors. But climate and health cannot be separated from each other. Only by bringing together sharp political and research minds in both sectors will we be able to weather the storms ahead.
The global spread of Italian food and wine as well as the popularity of Italy as a tourism destination—alongside the depiction of all three in popular culture—have helped establish the country as a “soft superpower.” Now a force largely outside of Rome’s control is threatening all three sectors: the climate crisis.