This year’s Perspectives from UNEP and its UNEP Risø Centre in collaboration with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) focuses on the elements of a new climate agreement by 2015 that will contribute to achieve the 2°C limit for global warming. The first paper frames the global mitigation challenge based on the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2012. The five other articles address key elements of a new climate agreement; emissions from international aviation, a vision for carbon markets up to 2020 and beyond, how green growth strategies can address the emissions gap, redesign of a REDD+ mechanism in response to the crisis of global deforestation and how NAMAs in Southern Africa can reconcile the gap between local and global objectives for development and climate change mitigation.