We are heading towards an increasingly low-carbon global economy, according to the executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).
Speaking to CNBC on Monday, Christiana Figueres highlighted the importance of last year's historic COP21 summit in Paris.
"I think the takeaway message (from Paris) is governments have done at least part of their job – a very, very important job – which is to give the incontrovertible signal of where we're headed," she said.
At COP21, 195 countries agreed to make sure global warming stayed below 2 degrees Celsius and pursue efforts to limit the temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
"We are headed towards a decarbonization of the global economy, no doubt about it," Figueres added.
"Now it is the turn of business, of investment managers to say 'OK, how are we going to get there, how do we have to change our investment patterns, how do we have to change the way in which we have been working for such a long time, in order to be able to get to the decarbonized economy in time?'"
Figueres' comments come in the wake of U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry stating that clean energy was "one of the greatest economic opportunities the world has ever seen."
Speaking at the Bloomberg New Energy Finance Summit in New York last week, Kerry added that, "If we make the changes necessary to combat climate change we will also unlock a global marketplace for clean energy the size of which the world has never seen before."
