Achieving sustainable development and meeting the UN Sustainable Development Goals requires that there be an effective process of negotiating and implementing sustainable development policies and practices. This paper characterizes an evolving approach that we define as sustainable development diplomacy. Based on an analysis of the history of climate governance as a case study of sustainable development diplomacy and drawing on a diverse range of literatures including international negotiations, global environmental governance, and socio-ecological systems, it identifies seven diagnostics that can be used to evaluate the negotiation and implementation of sustainable development goals. We argue for a needs-based approach that brings together diverse stakeholders to devise flexible solutions that fit the complexity and scale of sustainable development challenges. We illustrate the diagnostic elements with examples from our case study of climate change, as one of the major global sustainable development challenges, but the diagnostics have wider applicability to sustainable development diplomacy and practice more generally. Policy Implications• Policies designed to implement sustainable development must address underlying causes rather than treating symptoms.• Policies are more likely to be implemented if they incorporate mutual benefits for all parties and create a sense of ownership through engagement of diverse stakeholders.• Policies that successfully implement sustainable development goals should incorporate all three dimensions of sustainable development: society, environment and economy.• Policies must have effective implementation and follow-up provisions that set a course for action, but are sufficiently flexible to incorporate new information and conditions.

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This paper empirically evaluates how policy to mobilize climate finance works in practice. It examines the performance of nine types of climate finance policies, namely target lending, green bond policy, loan guarantee programmes, weather indexed insurance, feed-in-tariffs, tax credits, national development banks, disclosure policies and national climate funds, through a literature review and case studies. Both successful and unsuccessful country cases are examined. Criteria are established to evaluate climate finance policy, factors which lead to effective climate finance policy in practice are identified, current knowledge gaps are clarified, and policy implications provided. Key Policy insights. The effectiveness of climate finance policies depends on the criteria being used.. Strengths and weaknesses exist for each of the climate finance policies.. Feed-in tariffs, tax credits, loan guarantees, and national development banks are all effective at mobilizing private finance, but evidence to date is weak or thin on the effectiveness of national climate funds, targeted lending, disclosure, and green bonds. . Significant data and research gaps exist regarding the empirical impacts of climate finance policies, especially their environmental and equity impacts. . In selecting climate finance policies, a balance should be struck between mobilization effectiveness, economic efficiency, environmental integrity, and equity.

A review of global and national energy research, development, and demonstration (RD&D) investments between 2000 and 2018 reveals that global public energy RD&D and cleaner energy RD&D investments dramatically increased, but then plateaued after 2009. In absolute values, nuclear energy has held steady, fossil energy contracted, and clean energy RD&D quadrupled. As a percentage of overall investments, both fossil fuel and nuclear investments contracted during the period. This review compares the energy innovation priorities of the world's largest economies using the metric of public expenditures on energy RD&D. China and India have become important global public investors in energy innovation, now among the top five globally. Priorities set by the Chinese and Indian governments will thus influence new energy technology breakthroughs in the coming years. The US and Chinese governments are now competing for first place in clean energy RD&D, depending on whether or not nuclear and cross-cutting technologies are included. India has dedicated substantial funding to indigenizing nuclear power technologies.Energy RD&D by state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in major emerging economies remains skewed toward fossil fuels and nuclear. Reforming SOE expenditures to move away from fossil fuels could have a major impact on global energy technology trajectories, making a material difference in the quest to decarbonize the energy system.

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