Developments over the past few years have shown that reforms to address climate change are no less difficult to implement than reforms in other areas, even if the objective of limiting global warming is broadly accepted. In the case of global public goods such as the climate, the political challenge is further complicated by the need to convince voters that domestic action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is worth taking, notwithstanding the cost and uncertainties regarding other countries’ commitments. This paper seeks to draw a number of political-economy lessons from reform experience in other economic areas, and considers how these lessons can be applied to the particular case of climate change mitigation policy. It examines the main ingredients for building a constituency for greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reduction policies at home, stressing the need to establish the credibility of the overall objective and intermediate targets.
In March, 2011, China officially adopted its 12th Five-Year Plan, a blueprint for China’s development from 2011 to 2015. Its green targets will shape the country’s action on the environment over the next five years. But what are they? How were they decided? And what do they tell us about China's future path? In this book, chinadialogue brings together expert views from China, the United States and Europe on the significance of the Five-Year Plan, for China - and the wider world.
This working paper summarises output from Project Catalyst, an initiative of the ClimateWorks Foundation, aimed at providing analytical support for the UNFCCC negotiations on a post-Kyoto international climate agreement. It seeks to show how to spread best practice around the world effectively by learning from and building upon the experiences of first-generation low carbon growth plans (LCGPs). Key to each country’s LCGP is the balance between maximising mitigation and adaptation efforts whilst maintaining economic growth necessary to ensure that decades of developmental gains are not rolled back. A data-driven and country-specific LCGP is essential to guaranteeing success in finding this balance. The paper covers how the plans are developed and analysed, citing numerous examples of LCGPs from countries such as Mexico and South Africa.
The paper identifies some commonly shared factors determinant to success:
The report highlights occupational safety and health (OSH) as an integral part of the promotion of green jobs and a greener economy to achieve an economic and social development that is also environmentally sustainable. The report looks at different “green industries” from an OSH perspective, and shows that while green jobs improve the environment, revitalize the economy and create new employment opportunities, they may also present a number of known and unknown risks for workers. The greening of traditional sectors which will continue to provide the bulk of all employment and harbour most occupational safety and health risks can provide a major opportunity to make them safer and healthier, as well as energy efficient and environmentally sustainable, provided the right measures are taken.
This policy brief sets out the different methodologies available to assess the employment potential that green policies can offer and, in so doing, aims to help to focus policy decision-making in order to make it as efficient and productive as possible.
Economists studying environmental collective action and green governance have paid little attention to gender. Research on gender and green governance in other disciplines has focused mainly on women's near absence from forestry institutions. This interdisciplinary book turns that focus on its head to ask: what if women were present in these institutions? What difference would that make?
Would women's inclusion in forest governance - undeniably important for equity - also affect decisions on forest use and outcomes for conservation and subsistence? Are women's interests in forests different from men's? Would women's presence lead to better forests and more equitable access? Does it matter which class of women governs? And how large a presence of women would make an impact? Answers to these questions can prove foundational for effective environmental governance. Yet they have hardly been empirically investigated.
NREGA has been devised as a public work programme and is focussed around a rights-based approach to development. Key focus is on providing income security to rural households through guaranteed wage employment; reduce/check distress migration from the rural to urban areas and create durable community assets (in the rural areas) to trigger an overall development of around six lakh Indian villages.
This brief publication was prepared as an input into the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 by the Green Economy Coalition, a global network of organisations committed to accelerating the transition to a new green, inclusive economy. It sets out nine principles for a green, fair and inclusive economy that provides a better quality of life for all within the ecological limits of the planet. The principles are the result of five months of consultations with people and organisations around the world. The principles are: the Sustainable Principle; the Justice Principle; the Dignity Principle; the Healthy Planet Principle; the Inclusion Principle; the Good Governance and Accountability Principle; the Resilience Principle; the Efficiency and Sufficiency Principle; and the Generations Principle.
This publication was prepared as an input into the UN Conference on Sustainable Development 2012 by the Green Economy Coalition. It sets out the Coalition’s vision for change, drawing lessons from their series of national dialogues in developing and developed countries and from across the Coalition’s diverse membership. The pocketbook describes examples, stories and glimpses of a transition that is already underway. Quoting the Coalition the publication is “the most succinct but comprehensive understanding of a green economy drawn from a global and multi‐stakeholder perspective. It connects the dots between the many different actions going on at all levels – civil society, government, finance business – to show how it is possible to transform our economies so that they work for people and planet”. The summary was prepared by UNDESA.