As countries negotiated a new climate agreement for the United Nations climate conference in December 2015, a groundswell of climate actions emerged as cities, regions, businesses and civil society groups act on mitigation and adaptation, independently, with each other and with national governments and international organizations. The Paris conference provided a historic opportunity to establish a framework to catalyse, support, and steer these initiatives. Without such a framework, ‘bottom-up’ climate governance runs the risk of failing to deliver meaningful results. Social science research highlights the need for a comprehensive approach that promotes ambition, experimentation and accountability, and avoids unnecessary overlaps. This article specifies functions and design principles for a new, comprehensive framework for sub- and nonstate climate actions that could provide effective coordination.
This paper asks what insights the literature provides on divergence versus convergence of innovation paths in Europe and Asia. It contrasts the abundant literature on determinants of innovation paths with the scarcity of studies that are explicitly comparative across countries or continents. Implicit conclusions however emerge from several lines of work including evolutionary perspectives which stress differences in national conditions, and other perspectives which stress latecomer and globalisation effects. This paper distils and draws together the main conclusions on why innovation paths can be expected to diverge or converge. Its contribution lies in spelling out and bringing together implicit and explicit insights from a wide range of literatures. It also provides an analytical backdrop for some of the other papers in this special issue of Science and Public Policy which provide comparative empirical analyses of low carbon innovation paths.
This report from ICCG provides an insight into solar systems, among other renewable sources, high potential to contribute to the MENA region’s future generation needs.
This report presents the current progress of Italy towards a green economy. It provides a clear overview of the diffusion of green businesses and practices within the manufacturing, building and trade industries, and the primary and tertiary sectors. The report highlights that about 40% of Italian firms are either:
- Core Green (i.e. firms that produce environmental goods and services, or firms whose outputs have low environmental impact); or
- Go Green (i.e. firms that are taking steps towards the greening of their supply chains and business practices).
Additionally the report offers an overview of the modern state of some themes which are strategically important for the transition to a green economy in Italy. In specific the report analyses the diffusion of renewable energy technologies, the improvements in energy efficiency, the reduced emissions of pollutant gases, circular economy, eco-innovation, land and natural resources management, ecological agriculture and sustainable transport.
Evidence is growing that tenure-secure community forests are associated with avoided deforestation and other ecosystem-service benefits. However, securing community forest tenure also involves costs, including costs to establish supportive legislation, to demarcate and register the lands, to monitor and protect the lands as well as opportunity costs. But what are the costs compared to the benefits of securing and maintaining community forest tenure for community forest areas?
This working paper adresses this question by undertaking a benefit-cost analyses of community forest tenure in Brazil’s Indigenous Territories and Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve. Although data limitations prevented a full accounting of all costs and benefits, the results of the analyses suggest that:
- in the study areas, the economic benefits of securing community forest tenure outweigh the costs;
- securing community forest tenure is a low-cost, high-benefit investment that benefits communities, countries, and global society;
- investing in strong community forest tenure security can be a cost-effective measure for climate-change mitigation.
Himachal Pradesh is a mountain state in India which benefits from a wealth of natural resources but is also ecologically fragile, being situated in the Himalayan region. With climate change, socio-economic and ecological vulnerability has increased and risk-based approaches have become even more relevant. Green growth and sustainable development need to take into account the impacts of climate variability to strengthen policy interventions.
This report carries out an analysis aimed to build knowledge in this area. It uses a mix of analytical tools including a climate model, soil and water assessment, and energy analysis. The report finds that the overall climatic warming projected for the state of Himachal Pradesh in the near future increase by 1.3–1.9°C for 2021–50 relative to 1971–2000. Through a state-specific energy model and onground case studies, the report identifies important issues and pressure points, relevant for the energy and environment sectors.