The serious adverse effects of climate change, particularly on coral reefs and forests, and the increasing intensity and frequency of severe weather events affecting human lives, are obvious around us. These impacts pose major impediments to Belize’s efforts to promote sustainable economic and social development and reduction of poverty, which are the country’s primary and overriding priorities. This briefing paper, Opportunities for triple-wins development in coastal Belize, examines key actions underway to promote at Mangrove conservation and restoration along the Placencia Lagoon, Belize.
The purpose of this paper is to assess evidence of ‘triple wins’ on the ground, and the feasibility of triple wins that do not generate negative impacts. It describes the theoretical linkages that exist between adaptation, mitigation and development, as well as the trade-offs and synergies that might exist between them. Using four developing country studies, this working paper makes a simple assessment of the extent of climate compatible development policy in practice through the lens of ‘no-regrets’, ‘low regrets’ and ‘with regrets’ decision making. The lack of evidence of either policy or practice of triple wins significantly limits the capacity of donors to identify, monitor or evaluate ‘triple wins at this point in time. It is recommended that a more strategic assessment of the distributional and financial implications of 'triple wins' policies.
Energy taxes can produce substantial environmental and revenue benefits and are an important component of countries’ fiscal systems. Although the principle that these taxes should reflect global warming, air pollution, road congestion, and other adverse environmental impacts of energy use is well established, there has been little previous work providing guidance on how countries can put this principle into practice. This book develops a practical methodology, and associated tools, to show how the major environmental damages from energy can be quantified for different countries and used to design the efficient set of energy taxes. The results, which are illustrated for more than 150 countries, suggest there is pervasive mispricing of energy across developed and developing countries alike with much at stake in policy reform. At a global level, implementing efficient energy prices would reduce carbon emissions by an estimated 23 percent and fossil-fuel air pollution deaths by 63 percent, while raising revenues (badly needed for fiscal consolidation and reducing other burdensome taxes) averaging 2.6 percent of GDP.
The report highlights the importance of building compact, more efficient cities. It proposes creating a sustainable national urban system across the country and makes recommendations to support the government’s five-year Growth and Transformation Plan.
In the face of an increasing urban population, Ethiopia can learn from the experience of other developing countries. In some developing countries too much growth was concentrated in rapidly expanding capital cities. This meant that they were later unable to keep up with their growth, having to tackle health-related problems caused by pollution and divert scarce resources to provide services such as basic housing and sanitation to a sprawling urban population.
This is the second edition of the India Fossil-Fuel Subsidy Review, a biannual publication of the International Institute for Sustainable Development’s (IISD) Global Subsidies Initiative. Part One of this edition outlines economic and policy developments affecting key fuels (diesel, liquefied petroleum gas, kerosene and natural gas), and analyzes the dynamics of each market. Part Two features analysis by guest authors on issues related to energy subsidy policy reform. Also in this edition, articles examine potential reform paths for India’s LPG subsidy system, and lessons from a pilot program for electronic transfer of kerosene subsidies.
This research investigates the profitability of biofuels production in Africa, taking Ethiopia as a case in point, and suggests an oil price threshold beyond which biofuel may be profitable. Specifically, the study analyzes the viability of bioethanol from molasses and biodiesel from other feedstock in the context of Ethiopia, using data from a biofuels investment survey by EEPFE/EDRI in 2010, and makes estimates based on field visits.
This discussion paper hypothesizes that these findings were at least partly driven by the tendency of FSC certification to attract already- sustainably managed forests and by the governance challenges of community forestry in developing countries. One implication is that policymakers using FSC certification to generate environmental benefits may want to target forests with less-than-stellar management—particularly in the case of reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD) initiatives that emphasize improvement beyond business-as-usual—and to build the community and legal institutions needed for sustainable forestry.
Because the effectiveness of payment for ecosystem services (PES) programs depends on landowners’ engagement, understanding the relationship between the type of payment and participation is a key issue. This paper reports on a choice experiment that quantifies landowners’ preferences for cash and educational in-kind payment. The main results indicate a positive correlation between participation in a PES contract and the magnitude of the cash payment, while participation seems uncorrelated with the magnitude of the educational in-kind payment. In addition, we investigate the mix of payment types and heterogeneity in preferences, which can help policymakers design strategies to increase participation.
One method to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is to subsidize emissions-reducing activities. The question is how to allocate such subsidies. Allocation through auctions is an emerging mechanism. In a controlled experimental market setting, this paper compares the effects of a variety of auction mechanisms for allocating subsidies for carbon emissions reduction in China. Besides the conventional auction mechanisms, this discussion paper place particular focus on testing the actual performance of the auction mechanism proposed by Erik Maskin (2011). The authors find that, while the Maskin auction mechanism spends the most from a fixed subsidy budget and leads to the largest emissions reduction, its per-unit emissions reduction cost is higher than that of discriminatory and uniform-price auction mechanisms. Both the Maskin and uniform-price auctions outperform discriminatory auctions in price discovery. Furthermore, from the government’s perspective, the Maskin auctions exhibit the strongest improvement tendency with repeated auctions.
Uncertainty about the future is an important determinant of well-being, especially in developing countries where financial markets and other market failures result in ineffective insurance mechanisms. However, separating the effects of future uncertainty from realised events, and then measuring the impact of uncertainty on utility, presents a number of empirical challenges. This paper aims to address these issues and provides supporting evidence to show that increased climate variability (a proxy for future income uncertainty) reduces farmers’ subjective well-being, consistent with the theory of optimal expectations (Brunnermeier & Parker, 2005 AER), using panel data from rural Ethiopia and a new data set containing daily atmospheric parameters. The magnitude of our result indicates that a one standard deviation (7%) increase in climate variability has an equivalent effect on life satisfaction to a two standard deviation (1-2%) decrease in consumption. This effect is one of the largest determinants of life satisfaction in rural Ethiopia.