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Climate finance is a key instrument to enable the global response to climate change. Special financial arrangements are required to scale up investment in mitigation alongside adaptation to facilitate the transformation of global societies to a more sustainable, resilient, and equitable future. In 2022, at UNFCCC COP27 the third pillar, a loss and damage fund, was pledged to address the impacts of climate change that cannot be reversed through mitigation or adaptation measures. However, until now, both the quality and quantity of climate finance pledges remains inadequate to fund the required interventions. This policy paper provides recommendations from a consultation process with a panel of experts, who addressed the challenges and opportunities associated with finding adequate climate finance in pursuit of climate progress and sustainable development.

Well-functioning health systems are a pre-requisite for achieving Sustainable Development Goal 3 (SDG 3) Good Health and Wellbeing. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that the global health system should become more effective and equitable. The World Health Organization (WHO) serves as a vital resource for countries to enhance their national public health systems, and as a catalyst and enabler of multilateral cooperation for addressing global health-related threats. This policy paper proposes several key recommendations that, in the view of an expert panel, could be implemented in the near term to further strengthen and empower the WHO.

The dynamics of the global trade system is a key influencer in the transition to a sustainable future for humanity. This policy paper emerged from a consultation process with a panel of renowned experts. They focused on how the World Trade Organization (WTO) could be strengthened to provide a global trade system supportive of the sustainability agenda. It is recognized that the WTO was conceived in a different world from the one we live in today, geopolitically and ideologically. This policy paper raises several key recommendations that, in the view of the expert panel, could be implemented in the short term and would achieve a substantial impact to expand the mandate and influence of the WTO, within the broader context of improving global governance to address global societal challenges.

A sustainable, efficient, and thriving modern global multilateral system needs a functional and proactive the United Nations (UN). The UN represents the hopes and aspirations of millions of people around the world for a better life. Consequently, it is imperative that the UN is fully capable of setting and executing the required collective global multilateral agenda. This objective has not yet been fully achieved, and numerous bodies and critics have been calling for a fundamental reform of the UN for a number of years. This policy paper is the result of expert consultations focused on identifying necessary, near-term reforms for the United Nations (UN) which are both feasible and capable of obtaining wide support.

International scientific cooperation was crucial in maintaining relations between antagonistic parties during the cold war. Now, during Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, we should not withdraw from such informal (‘track II’) diplomacy, but strengthen it. Research collaboration for the global good transcends nationalism. This philosophy was recognized by US president Lyndon Johnson and Soviet premier Alexey Kosygin when they met in 1967 to establish the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Laxenburg, Austria. It is also embedded in the statutes and constitutions of the institutions that we lead and represent. Such international scientific bodies and networks work over many years to build bridges between nations and communities to address matters of common concern, and to make global progress towards a better future for all. They are especially important at times when political relations falter, as now. Abandoning the founding principles of track II scientific-diplomacy institutions would cause irreparable harm to their reputations, with little prospect of recovering the gains made over decades. Once an institution loses its standing as a neutral broker and facilitator, it is gone forever. This is the time to send firm and unambiguous messages about inappropriate actions, yet remain reasoned, principled, diplomatic and strategic about recovery in the aftermath of the war.

This data repository contains the results of the NatureMap ( naturemap.earth/) conservation prioritization effort. The maps were created by jointly optimizing biodiversity and NCPs such as carbon and/or water. Maps are supplied at both 10km and 50km resolution and all maps that aim to find priority areas for all species considered in the analysis, utilize a series of representative sets. The ranks for each layer are area-specific and can be used to extract summary statistics by simple subsetting. For example, to obtain the top 30% of land area for biodiversity and carbon, one needs to create a mask of all areas lower than a value of 30 from the respective ranked layers. For convenience two files are supplied that contain the fraction of land area per grid cell times 1000. Multiplying those with the cell area (100km2, respectively 2500km2) gives the exact amount of land area in a given grid cell. These are labelled "globalgrid_mollweide_**km.tif " can be used to create masks for the priority maps. The geographic projection is World Mollweide Equal Area projection.