Next month, the Global Climate Action Summit — one of the largest international gatherings on climate change the world has seen — will be held in San Francisco. The event, whose theme is "Take Ambition to the Next Level," aims to serve as a launchpad for accelerated action that will enable the world to meet the goals set by the 2015 Paris climate agreement.

It is a golden opportunity to make progress in the effort to combat global warming, but it can be seized only with the involvement of all stakeholders.

With the Paris climate agreement, the international community agreed to limit the rise in average global temperature to 2 degrees Celsius — and ideally 1.5 degrees — above pre-industrial levels. To that end, national governments were tasked with developing their own climate action plans, called Nationally Determined Contributions.