This report traces the debate, analysis and action on the water, food and energy (WFE) security nexus.
This study on innovative sanitation financing recognizes the challenge facing the region, to halve the proportion of the population without access to sanitation by 2015. The study proposes a “paradigm shift” to outcome models, recognizing that sanitation not only remains a focus of international development targets but is also linked to many other development issues such as health, environment, education, gender, disability, tourism and economic growth. This study proposes the inclusion of the private sector in a value proposition, with everyone in society benefiting from improved sanitation, and generating the willingness to pay for these services. ESCAP published this discussion paper, targeted for discussions at the Second Asia-Pacific Water Forum (2APWS), in Chiang Mai, May 2013, to provide background materials for the discussions at both the Technical workshops and the Focus Area Sessions.
Climate change could potentially interrupt progress toward a world without hunger. A robust and coherent global pattern is discernible of the impacts of climate change on crop productivity that could have consequences for food availability. The stability of whole food systems may be at risk under climate change because of short-term variability in supply. However, the potential impact is less clear at regional scales, but it is likely that climate variability and change will exacerbate food insecurity in areas currently vulnerable to hunger and undernutrition. Likewise, it can be anticipated that food access and utilization will be affected indirectly via collateral effects on household and individual incomes, and food utilization could be impaired by loss of access to drinking water and damage to health. The evidence supports the need for considerable investment in adaptation and mitigation actions toward a “climate-smart food system” that is more resilient to climate change influences on food security.
Three different sets of approaches to understanding behaviour with respect to sustainable tourism mobility and consumption are identified in this paper: the utilitarian, social/psychological and the systems of provision/institutional approach. Each is based on different sets of assumptions on the factors that affect consumer sustainability behaviour. These assumptions not only affect the selection of policy tools to change behaviours but are also related to different modes of governance. Assumptions with respect to human behaviour and behavioural change and modes of intervention and governance are interrelated and mutually reinforcing and act as policy paradigms. Failure to recognise the importance of social structures in affecting behaviour has created a path dependency in which solutions to sustainable tourism mobility are only accepted within the dominant governance and behavioural paradigm. Other policy options and academic research that identify structures and institutions in systems of provision as a sustainability problem that requires non-market intervention and/or significant system change are regarded as marginal to the policy process or are ignored.
Researchers have long been interested in whether environmental regulations discourage investment, reduce labour demand, or alter patterns of international trade. But estimating those consequences of regulations requires devising a means of measuring their stringency empirically. While creating such a measure is often portrayed as a data-collection problem, this paper identifies four fundamental conceptual obstacles, which the authors label multidimensionality, simultaneity, industrial composition, and capital vintage. The paper then describes the long history of attempts to measure environmental regulatory stringency, and assess their relative success in light of those obstacles. Finally, the authors propose a new measure of stringency that would be based on emissions data and could be constructed separately for different pollutants.
Developing countries have collectively displayed relatively high growth rates in the last decade. Although large disparities still persist in standards of living, low and middle income countries averaged economic growth of 6.2 per cent between 2000 and 2008, pulling 325 million people out of poverty (World Bank, 2010). Global growth has been accompanied by environmental degradation and in some cases there are growing numbers of people still living in poverty. Key questions for development planning today in countries include: Can developing countries strike a balance between economic growth, societal well-being and environmental protection? Can inclusive, green growth be a way forward? This report presents a case study on Cambodia designed to answer these questions. The case study draws on several sources of information to compile a "snapshot" of the situation today. In particular, qualitative information was gathered through a two-day, multi-stakeholder workshop and through bilateral interviews conducted with relevant actors from both public and private sectors.