This Earth Day, the United States, China, and Canada are among more than 170 countries expected to take part in the largest one-day signing of an international agreement in history. The ratification of the climate agreement hammered out at the Paris Conference of Parties (COP-21) last December could be the most significant elevation of environmental issues on the global stage yet.

After the signing ceremony, it will be important to see which other countries join the agreement, binding them to the Paris promise to keep warming below two degrees Celsius compared to pre-industrial-era levels.

How do we sustain the momentum of Paris and begin efforts to actually reach the goals outlined in the agreement? Initial commitments by governments, as many have pointed out, are not enough to stop and reverse climate change, so governments and advocates will need to continually take stock and find ways to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions and their impacts. The Sustainable Development Goals, agreed to by the United Nations General Assembly just three months before Paris, provide a very ambitious roadmap of commitments, including on climate change, that governments, donors, and civil society are now tasked with trying to achieve before 2030.

In this context of hope and anticipation, there are five key opportunities to align and engage the Paris Agreement and SDGs with other key objectives around humanitarian assistance, peace, human rights, and the rule of law.

Take Advantage of Shared Objectives

The Paris Agreement was a success for climate diplomacy on many levels, but details on financing its commitments and how its actions interact with the other international frameworks, like the Sendai Agreement for Disaster Risk Reduction, the World Humanitarian Summit, and the SDGs, are unclear. What are the economies of scale, how will it be organized at the local and national levels, and what are the opportunities for aligning these agendas?

Eliza Northrup of the World Resources Institute made the case at the Wilson Center that there is substantial alignment between what countries are required to do to fulfill their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), the pledges made before and after COP-21, and what is required to achieve the SDGs. As such she recommends countries undertake national mapping exercises to identify potential co-benefits from these processes. Coordination can maximize funding opportunities to make the most of limited national and international public resources.

Build Climate Peace

At the request of the G7 foreign ministers, representing the largest block of foreign assistance funding in the world, the Wilson Center and our partners last year identified a series of compound climate risks that combine with other political, demographic, and economic factors to increase political instability and state fragility.

The seven risks described in A New Climate for Peace include reduced access to natural resources, especially water and arable land; loss of livelihoods and migration; extreme weather events and disasters; food insecurity; poor transboundary water resource management; rising sea levels; and the unintended negative side effects of poorly designed mitigation and adaptation efforts.

These compound risks underline the urgent need to address climate change to ensure that societies are peaceful and prosperous. But our report found few efforts to integrate climate-fragility risks into development, humanitarian aid, and peacebuilding policies and programs.

Last April, the G7 foreign ministers established the G7 Working Group on Climate Change and Fragility to study the recommendations from A New Climate for Peace, and since then, momentum among the member states to address climate-fragility risks has accelerated rapidly.

Secretary of State John Kerry announced an internal U.S. task force to integrate climate change and security issues into foreign policy last fall. The U.S. and Canada agreed to cooperate via the G7 working group in a joint statement released by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the White House last month. And two weeks ago, the G7 foreign ministers endorsed the working group’s recommendations, kicking off an ambitious agenda to integrate climate-fragility risks into G7 cooperation within its member states and with other international and regional bodies.

Now is the time to build on these steps and turn climate conflict into climate peace.

Recognize Climate Justice as a Human Right

Besides mitigation (reducing carbon emissions) and adaptation (avoiding the worst effects of climate change), a third track in climate negotiations – loss and damage – is garnering new attention. Loss and damage refers to the complete and irrecoverable loss of some things, such as human lives, habitats, or cultures, and the repairable damage of other things, such as infrastructure and property due to human-induced climate change.

A question at the heart of the discussion on loss and damage is how we achieve climate justice for the most vulnerable people – those living in small-island states and low-lying areas, indigenous peoples, women, the poor, and the displaced. Some face the utter destruction of their homes, a prospect with deep intergenerational and cultural implications.

The SDGs are primarily focused on rights and freedoms – the right to health, education, water, energy, equality, peace, and justice for all. In Paris, the Alliance of Small Island States made real progress on advancing this rights framework in the context of loss and damage – most importantly, getting an aspirational goal in the final text to limit temperature change to 1.5 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels.

As we begin to implement new climate and development programs, the importance of universal human rights must remain at the fore – not only to ensure their effectiveness in reaching the most vulnerable people, but to avoid making matters worse by further marginalizing certain groups.

Strengthen the Rule of Law to Avoid Climate Corruption

The Paris Agreement states that all financial flows – both public and private – need to be shifted from high to low emission activities and from risky to resilient investments. In principle, developed countries will continue their commitment to mobilize $100 billion a year through 2025. After that, governments will adopt a new, higher collective goal, though the extent to which finance will increase, and who will mobilize it, is a significant outstanding question.

An under-appreciated aspect of this story, however, is how the complexity, uncertainty, and novelty that surround climate financing creates new corruption risks.

Key concepts of climate financing are being debated, such as how to assess “additionality” – meaning whether a project to reduce emissions would have occurred even without support from climate financing – and how to estimate restitution for loss and damage. As a result there are regulatory grey zones and loopholes that may be exploited. Some small island states have existing problems with corruption, for example, given close family ties and the relative power of government in a small economy.

Furthermore, inadequate representation and redress mechanisms for vulnerable populations are serious challenges. Marginalized individuals and groups directly affected by climate change need access to knowledge and judicial redress in order to stand up for themselves. What happens when seawalls fail, flooding poor urban communities? As climate financing grows, partly as a means of addressing inequality, it is crucial that these marginalized people are guarded against additional risk.

Strengthen Capacity to Generate, Analyze, and Use Data

There are 17 Sustainable Development Goals, with 169 sub-targets – a substantial increase from the eight goals and 48 indicators of their predecessor, the Millennium Development Goals. This represents a significant data collection challenge. Successfully tracking progress on INDCs globally and the performance of climate financing will also require reams of new data.

Countries agreed at COP-21 to establish a new committee on capacity building to begin helping governments adapt to these requirements, but it will require a major effort from donors, the private sector, civil society, and the academic community too.

As my colleagues and I on the U.S. National Science Foundation Advisory Committee for Environmental Research and Education recently wrote, to change “the trajectory of current trends away from insecurity, multilevel stress, conflict, and vulnerability, and toward sustainable development, resilience, wellbeing, stewardship, and prosperity,” we need more investment in research, data analysis, and education for the next generation.

This is becoming more and more important as we see that it is possible to decouple economic growth from environmental destruction, negative health impacts, and inequity. Data producers and users need the tools to anticipate and shape our future, not merely adapt.

There are also geographic and sectoral data gaps – critical places or issues about which we do not have accurate or up-to-date information. Not every gap needs to be filled with brand new initiatives, however; there are opportunities to improve coverage or accuracy simply by encouraging more collaboration across topical and organizational lines. And there should be a role for innovative data collection approaches such as citizen science initiatives.

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So as we celebrate Earth Day 2016 with the historic signing of the Paris Agreement, let’s keep these opportunities in mind – build peace, take advantage of overlapping objectives, fight climate corruption, get the most out of data, and most of all, protect the rights of every human being.