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The traumatic and heart-wrenching spectacle of destructive storms in so many parts of the globe in recent months, including Asia, the Caribbean and the United States, more than anything else highlights the urgency of preventing even more destructive climate change.Ensuring the full implementation of the Paris Climate Change Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals together – championed and agreed by the international community of nations under the UN – represents the one chance the world has to avoid the worst.That is why the job of COP23, the next UN Climate Change Conference in Bonn, Germany, is to demonstrate not only that rising numbers of governments, cities, states, businesses and civil society are taking ambitious climate action, but to progress further and faster now on exactly how they cooperate and coordinate together to make a much bigger united impact.This agreed global development agenda is a new and optimistic vision of the future. It promises a future where stable, secure lives and livelihoods remain possible.It demands that we cut the greenhouse gas emissions which raise temperatures much faster than we have so far managed to and it offers societies the best chance properly to protect themselves against the ravages of existing climate change.It demands that we rethink together the way we produce, use and consume energy, how we CLIMATE ACTION AT COP23:ALL ACTION NEEDED. ACTION TOGETHER ESSENTIAL“ THIS YEAR’S COP23 IS ITSELF A WELCOME MIRROR OF COOPERATION AND COORDINATION ”PATRICIA ESPINOSA, EXECUTIVE SECRETARY, UNITED NATIONS CLIMATE CHANGE (UNFCCC)manufacture and build, how we manage our land and ecosystems.It demands we ensure that every cent we invest now is directed at this one viable future.The Paris Agreement is a long-term global strategy but its stated goal of keeping the global temperature rise since the late 19th century well below 2°C, and as close to 1.5°C as possible, underlines the imperative of delivering significant results right now – not least because we have seen around 1°C of that rise already.To this end, policies must be set in place now, technologies developed, matured, commercialized and deployed at scale, and practices and behaviors of all economic actors moved ever faster towards low-emission and sustainable business and investment.COP23 – MIRROR OF COOPERATION AND COORDINATIONThis year’s COP23 is itself a welcome mirror of cooperation and coordination.The conference, organized by Bonn-based UN Climate Change (UNFCCC), is presided over by the small, developing Pacific island state of Fiji and is organizationally and logistically supported by G7 member Germany, with further support from the German state of North-Rhine-Westphalia and the City of Bonn. A central goal for the Fijian Presidency of COP23 is to forge a grand coalition to accelerate climate 014 FOREWORD