Former Finnish prime minister Esko Aho reflected on the well-known phrase, "never let a good crisis go to waste", on Wednesday as he weighed in on the current surge in oil prices amid the joint United States-Israeli strikes on Iran.

Often attributed to Winston Churchill, the quote resonated with Aho as he was addressing a climate-themed side event during the annual Boao Forum for Asia, which kicked off on Tuesday in Hainan province and will run through Friday.

He recalled the 1973 energy crisis — temporary cessation of oil shipments from the Middle East to some countries in the West — as one of the "good crises" because it forced countries to start reducing their dependency on oil. That crisis, he said, spurred the development of new technologies and the emergence of alternatives to oil through the use of new materials.

Drawing a parallel to today's situation, he said: "This present crisis is again a good wake-up call. The lesson to be learned is that we have to increase the reduction of dependency on oil, and we have to continue investments in alternatives."

In the short term, these investments may not all be profitable, he acknowledged, but in the longer term, they are going to pay back.

Also drawing on history, Liu Zhenmin, China's special envoy for climate change, stressed the importance of multilateralism in addressing the climate crisis while pointing to an increasingly challenging global political landscape.

Global climate cooperation since the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change has delivered measurable results, he said.

"If the climate convention had not been reached, there would have been no Paris Agreement in 2015, and the temperature increase now would be far above 1.5 C," he said.

Yet Liu warned that this hard-won progress is now under threat. The renewed withdrawal of the US — one of the leaders that initiated climate change negotiations — from the Paris Agreement in 2025, he said, has dealt a severe blow to multilateral efforts.

That has undermined the integrity of multilateral climate cooperation and shaken confidence in the international community, he said. Coupled with growing internal divisions within the European Union, it has left developed countries struggling to maintain momentum.

This, in turn, has weakened their commitments to provide financial support to developing nations, Liu said. With no funding forthcoming, developing countries are now struggling to advance their energy transition goals.

Liu noted that new trade protectionist measures are adding to the difficulty. Introduced by some developed economies in the name of safeguarding competitiveness, these barriers directly hinder the global deployment of clean energy technologies.

Still, Liu expressed cautious optimism.

He said the path laid out from the 1992 climate convention to the Paris Agreement continues to command broad international consensus. That direction, he said, was reaffirmed at the 2023 UN climate change conference, which called for a just, fair and orderly transition away from fossil fuels toward non-fossil and renewable energy sources.

"We are all moving in that direction," he said. "The question now is how to accelerate the pace."