That includes shifting trillions of dollars each year into renewable energy – up from US$345 billion last year – and making everything from transport to agriculture and consumer products much greener very quickly.

“This is about scale. It is about timing. It is about scope.We cannot move 500 companies and 200 investors in a few countries. We need to move everything,” said Mindy Lubber, president of Ceres, a US-based business sustainability group.

Failure to make big shifts fast would amount to putting our children and grandchildren in the path of a speeding bus, she told the Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford.

“We would each throw ourselves in front of a bus if it was coming at our child, regardless of our politics,” she said. “We have got to change this debate so people understand… climate change is that bus.”

Coal’s days numbered?

Some of that transformation is already underway, said David Blood, a senior partner at Generation Investment Management. Much of the clean energy technology needed is already available, and a surging divestment campaign is persuading investors that keeping money in fossil fuel companies is a growing financial risk.

But while experts predicted the US coal industry is on its way out of business, large-scale investment in coal – one of the biggest drivers of climate change – is still happening in parts of Africa and South Asia, particularly India.

Reversing that by ensuring India and other countries have access to clean technology should be a priority for efforts to hold climate change to manageable levels, they said.

“It’s in the interests of the whole world that India gets (to clean energy) faster,” said Mary Robinson, a former Irish president who runs a climate justice foundation.

But large institutional investors are wary of risk and want clear returns, which can make them hesitant to invest in emerging economies like India, the experts said.

Creating investment tools that work for both those with the cash and those that need it is crucial to drive money to the right places to address climate change, Lubber said.

That must be done in a way that persuades investors who “don’t recognise the urgency of the problem”, said Blood, whose company is one of the world’s largest sustainable investment firms.

If the investment picture has not changed hugely in four years, “we’re in significant trouble”, he predicted.

The UN-brokered Paris climate agreement, backed by 195countries in December, aims to hold the rise in global average temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, with an aspirational limit of 1.5 degrees.

To achieve that, the world needs to be emitting no more carbon pollution than can be absorbed by forests and other planetary systems in the second half of the century.

The Paris deal “sends a signal to investors, sends a signal to consumers, sends a signal to everyone in the world… that fossil fuels have a very limited lifespan now”, said Thom Woodroofe, a climate policy advisor for Independent Diplomat.

Unburnable reserves

But switching away from dirty fuels will require some key changes to shift investment, experts said, among them putting a realistic price on carbon pollution and the damage it is causing- from worsening storms to agricultural losses.

Setting a workable carbon price “is one of the single most important things” that needs to be done, Lubber said.

Another is to shut down fossil fuel exploration, given that two-thirds of the reserves already discovered can never be burned under the new Paris agreement, the experts said.

Former US Vice President Al Gore, who spoke at the Oxford forum this week, put the value of unburnable fossil fuels at $22 trillion.

Investment in fossil fuel exploration is already down over the last five years, from $650 billion a year to $400 billion, Lubber said. But some of that decline is the result of dramatically lower oil prices and companies are still seeking oil in places from the Arctic to Canada’s tar sands.

Still, the fossil fuel divestment campaign “has forced the question of what is a profitable company”, Lubber said.

“Five years ago you didn’t see analyst reports on the financial strength of the fossil fuel industry. Now there are hundreds of those. The debate has changed,” she added.

Equally important will be helping many more people understand that climate change is something that needs action at home, in politics and on the streets, experts said.

When 400,000 people marched to call for stronger policies on climate change in New York last September, with thousands more on the streets of other cities, “it changed the debate, it changed the news media. We need to see that times a thousand around the world,” Lubber said.

From today, “everyone has to take this personally”, Robinson said. “We need a movement that says, ’This is too important to be left to the government and the United Nations and business.’”

– Thomson Reuters Foundation

He said the two projects, funded under the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s compact with Indonesia, were part of the US government’s strong support for Indonesia’s climate change goals.

“The projects will help restore and protect the country’s peatland areas, which have been threatened by fire in recent years, and when burned are a major contributor to the release of greenhouse gases,” Blake said.

The first initiative, a US$17 million programme known as the Berbak Green Prosperity Project, will help restore the water of peat swamp forests in Jambi. The restoration of this system will help to eventually decrease the prevalence of peat fires in the province.

“The Berbak project will also provide training to increase production of local agriculture and facilitate smallholder oil palm certifications and community-based palm oil mill effluent renewable energy systems,” the US embassy said this week.

The second initiative is a $13-million agreement with three palm oil mills in Riau Province for biogas power plants utilizing palm oil mill effluent and assisting independent smallholders in each mill’s supply base to become RSPO certified.

This grant alone is expected to produce 3 MW of renewable energy from biogas, the equivalent amount of electricity needed to power 9,000 rural homes; capture 117,000 tCO2e/year, which is equivalent to emissions from vehicles driving 785 million kilometres per year. It is also expected that the project can improve productivity and management practices for 2,000 independent smallholders.

The US embassy said these two programmes, both of which will be implemented by an Indonesian agency, the Millennium Challenge Account – Indonesia (MCA-I), were part of the US government’s overall support for Indonesia’s commitment to reduce carbon emissions and protect vulnerable peatlands.

Apart from these projects, the US, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), has recently launched a new portfolio of projects to address climate change and support Indonesia’s goal of reducing emissions by 29 per cent by 2030.

According to the embassy, USAID will partner with the Indonesian government to help conserve and sustainably manage 8.4 million hectares of forest and peatland that can serve as carbon sinks.

The embassy added that USAID would help eliminate 4.5 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and leverage $800 million in private sector investment in clean energy for five million citizens.

“USAID will also help protect local communities from the effects of a changing climate and more extreme weather by assisting national and provincial governments implement effective climate change adaptation strategies.”