Long-term climate strategies are practical economic planning tools that can help governments manage volatility, mobilize investment and make the energy transition work for people and communities.
Photo credit: Mark Stoop – Unsplash
In an era defined by geopolitical conflicts, volatile energy prices, disrupted supply chains, changing trade relationships and intensifying climate impacts, governments need a steady hand that can anchor today's policy decisions to tomorrow's goals.
Long-term climate strategies offer exactly that – aligning climate and development goals, and the policy and investment tools that support them, in ways that benefit people, nature and the climate. These strategies hold steady through political transitions, helping governments make better near-term choices in service of the future they are aiming to build.
Also known as long-term low-emission development strategies (or LT-LEDS), these plans work backward from a long-term goal, such as achieving net-zero emissions, together with development priorities like job creation, energy access and economic growth, to shape the nearer-term decisions that actually get funded, from five-year national climate plans to annual budgets and sector investments. Along the way, these strategies help break down silos within governments and provide the certainty investors need to scale finance.
Navigating a Volatile World
As Venugopal Mothkoor of NITI Aayog, India’s policy think tank, said at a recent webinar hosted by 2050 is Now, a consortium that supports countries in developing and updating long-term strategies: “In a stable environment, long-term strategies are important, but in an unstable world, they are indispensable.”
For months, the war on Iran and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz cut off a quarter of the world's seaborne oil and a fifth of its liquefied natural gas. The crisis made clear that moving away from fossil fuels is no longer just a climate goal but central to energy security and economic stability – momentum reinforced at the first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference in Santa Marta, Colombia, in April. Yet when countries need to deliver on climate, energy security, economic stability and increasing equality all at once, careful long-term planning becomes even more important.
At a time when some countries are pulling back from their climate commitments, countries like India, Ethiopia, South Africa, Australia and France are seizing this moment by advancing their long-term strategies to protect communities, navigate trade-offs, capture economic opportunities and build the resilience that a volatile world demands. Here’s how they’re doing it.
Building a Shared Vision Across Government
Long-term strategies only deliver when they are owned across government and embedded in economic planning, budgets and sector decisions.
For example, Ethiopia aligned implementation across its Climate Resilient Green Economy vision, National Adaptation Plan, long-term strategy and latest national climate plan with its 10-year development plan, which is put together by mainstream planning institutions. Together, these plans guide national policymaking, so climate goals are built into the country's development priorities rather than treated as a separate agenda.
“If climate change is not integrated in development planning and budget discussions, as well as sectoral and macroeconomic reforms, then it will remain a paper ambition,” Abas Mohammed, CEO of Climate Change Policy and Action in Ethiopia's Ministry of Planning and Development, said during the 2050 is Now webinar. “And paper ambition does not protect farmers, cities or public finances.”
Ethiopia’s recent ban on gas-powered vehicle imports illustrates how this alignment works in practice when multiple ministries can support implementation of a new policy. The plan was put forward by the Ministry of Transport and Logistics in coordination with the Ministry of Finance and the Councils of Ministers as promoting a transition to electric vehicles and also as a financial policy, saving billions on fuel imports. For a country aligned on climate and development goals across its government, this kind of cohesion comes naturally.
Ownership must also extend beyond government. Paseka Mabina, director for climate change mitigation research and analysis at South Africa’s Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment, argue that strategies are most robust when they include diverse stakeholders – including vulnerable groups – from the very start, as these strategies affect livelihoods, communities and local economies.
In updating its long-term strategy, South Africa developed eight narratives to explore what it means to have a “good life” and to show how the country can address poverty, inequality, unemployment, adaptation and decarbonization together. These were developed by government experts as well as civil society, think tanks, organized labor, industry and academics. This approach has the potential to make South Africa's climate and development plans more socially acceptable and durable, and sets an example other countries can learn from.
Translating a National Vision Into Sectoral Pathways
A national goal only becomes real when broken into sector-specific transitions with clear milestones, ownership and timelines. The following examples show how long-term strategies can help tackle the practical obstacles that stand between ambition and delivery.
France's 2026 Roadmap for Transitioning away from Fossil Fuels is among the most explicit recent examples. Built on the National Low-Carbon Strategy and Multiannual Energy Planning, it plans to phase out coal dependence by 2030, oil by 2045 and fossil gas by 2050, with interim goals to cut fossil fuels' share of final energy consumption to 40% by 2030 and 30% by 2035. Paired with concrete measures – transport electrification, building renovation, heat pump deployment, fossil-fuel boiler phaseouts – it moves from broad intention to operational choices across sectors with very different investment cycles.
Australia's Net Zero Plan sets out an overarching pathway supported by six sector plans, each co-led by the relevant ministry, and underpinned by the same economic modeling and analysis undertaken by the Australian Treasury. That ownership embeds climate objectives in the decisions of those responsible for energy, industry, transport, agriculture, environment, housing and regional development.
It also surfaces practical barriers. For example, lead times for renewable energy projects were up to seven years for onshore wind and up to six years for large-scale solar, which deterred investment and eroded community trust. Surfacing this core challenge through the plan enabled it to be addressed as part of recent environmental protection reforms.
As a result, the government allocated over 70 million Australian dollars ($48.8 million) this year to deliver faster project approvals in collaboration with local and regional governments, alongside more streamlined processes for other priority areas like housing and critical minerals, while at the same time strengthening environmental protections.
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WRI - World Resources Institute
