This paper examines the relative attractions of a carbon tax, a “pure” cap-and-trade system, and a “hybrid” option (a cap-and-trade system with a price ceiling and/or price floor). The paper shows that the various options are equivalent along more dimensions than often are recognised. In addition, the authors bring out important dimensions along which the approaches have very different impacts. Several of these dimensions have received little attention in prior literature. A key finding is that exogenous emissions pricing (whether through a carbon tax or through the hybrid option) has a number of attractions over pure cap and trade. Beyond helping prevent price volatility and reducing expected policy errors in the face of uncertainties, exogenous pricing helps avoid problematic interactions with other climate policies and helps avoid large wealth transfers to oil exporting countries.
The report "Incorporating Climate and Ocean Change into an Ecosystem Approach to Fisheries Management (EAFM) Plan" explains how the potential impacts of climate and ocean change can be integrated into ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries management.
The report's target audience is governments and organizations creating such management plans in the Coral Triangle region. This region is expected to experience increases in sea-surface temperatures and rainfall. It lists steps that governments and organizations can take to create a fisheries management plan that takes an ecosystem-based approach. This would start with a climate vulnerability assessment. Steps include defining the scope of the fisheries management unit; identifying and prioritizing issues and goals; developing the plan and implementing it; and monitoring, evaluating progress and adapting where needed.
Green growth involves transforming production and consumption processes in order to maintain or restore the regulatory functions of the planet's natural capital. It requires that environmental factors be treated as an essential factor of production and not merely an externality. In practice, this transition depends on advances being made in four areas: widening the concept of efficiency; energy transitions; inclusion of the value of natural capital in economic life; and a revision of the scale of risks within the financial system whose innovations for allocating resources at low cost to green growth would be greatly facilitated by effective pricing of environmental pollution.
The private sector is increasingly being engaged in climate finance and climate-related activities. Private sector opportunities for engagement in climate change adaptation are less clear than for mitigation, particularly in developing countries. This article first conceptualizes private sector engagement in adaptation by exploring (1) different roles of the private sector in adaptation in developing countries and (2) the way governments can create an enabling environment to increase private sector engagement. Second, it analyses how 47 least developed countries (LDCs) envisage the role of the private sector in their National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs). This article argues that private sector engagement in adaptation is often inevitable and potentially significant. Yet, the results show that it receives little attention in NAPAs.
In 2013 and 2014 Green Capital’s major two-year project, Sustainable Economic Frontiers, is exploring and analysing a dynamic, fast-evolving and diverse field, from a distinctively Australian perspective. Simultaneously there is a growing wave of bottom-up civil society, local government and business action aimed at delivering more sustainable and resilient communities and enterprises. The aim of the report is to conduct an initial highlevel overview, ahead of deeper investigation of what is on offer, and to promote dialogue about the ideas and the trends that are taking shape.
The world's first cities were in the Uruk cluster in Mesopotamia. The largest was Ur, which appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh (one of the earliest known works of literature, set around 3,500 BCE). Extending over 60 hectares, Ur was home to about 24,000 people. But as an irrigation city, also providing marketing and defense services, it governed and extracted surpluses from a neighboring population of about 500,000. Its urban population was densely concentrated, more than 400 people per hectare, and the planning practices were strikingly sophisticated. With four main residential areas, Ur offered its inhabitants basic amenities such as well-laid-out streets and sanitation. The report provides a framework to help city leaders make informed decisions for sustainable development in their cities. This book, planning, connecting, and financing cities, now distills the lessons learned from these diagnostics into a practical framework for sustainable urbanization, which is organized around the three policy pillars of the title.