Conference Programme

Objective

The GTP Report 2025 makes one thing certain: the cost of inaction far exceeds the cost of transition. Climate finance that accounts for long-term economic and health benefits are more urgently needed than ever. For the Global South, the finance gap remains the primary barrier to triggering positive tipping points. This plenary dives into the mechanisms needed for health-centred mitigation and adaptation and examines potential positive tipping points in the financial sector – building on the GTP2025 report’s notes on green technology affordability. Is the current global financial architecture fit for purpose or does it reinforce the vulnerability of the Global South? How can planetary health investments become the default, low-risk option for emerging markets?

Objective

Why are human systems – and particularly, the dominant economic model – so resistant to transformative change? What would it take, practically, to disseminate and stabilise the meanings, behaviours, incentives, purpose and power relations that would catalyse positive tipping points? Previous sessions set the scene and looked at the role of regional and multinational cooperation, of nature, of communication, finance, faith and culture in those dynamics. To this list two more critical elements should be added: the law and legal action. The dangerous tipping points we face are the result of choices underpinned by the legal system: a legal wiring that has led to the concentration of power, deepened global inequalities and enabled ecological degradation. But legal systems are complex, contradictory and constantly evolving, which offers entry points for change via legal action. This session explores law's role as foundation of today's crises, and its flipside – the concrete examples of strategic levers that legal action can pull to get us to the positive tipping points needed for a thriving planet.

Objective

Every major shock carries within it the seeds of a faster transition if societies are positioned to seize it. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz earlier in 2026, the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, has made that proposition uncomfortably real. It has sorted countries into those who invested in energy resilience before this crisis struck and those who did not. The hunger for energy to feed an AI arms race is exacerbating this crisis and its geopolitics This plenary examines how that investment pays economic and political dividends when shocks arrive. Drawing on the science of tipping points, it identifies the policy triggers, finance mechanisms, and regional coalitions that can turn instability into irreversible momentum, with particular attention to Asia's capacity to lead the global clean energy transition.