When 197 countries adopted the Paris Agreement on Climate Change in 2015, I remember feeling an extraordinary surge of hope – for multilateralism, for science, for humanity. Years of advocacy for small and vulnerable Commonwealth states had culminated in a binding pact to tackle the greatest threat to planet Earth, together. No one expected that just five years later a deadly pandemic would throw everything we had worked for into dreadful disarray. As countries grapple with the debilitating impact of the Covid-19 coronavirus, it can even seem like the focus on climate action has diminished,...