Ho Chi Minh City faces significant and growing flood risk. Recent risk reduction efforts may be insufficient as climate and socio-economic conditions diverge from projections made when those efforts were initially planned. This study demonstrates how robust decision making can help Ho Chi Minh City develop integrated flood risk management strategies in the face of such deep uncertainty. Robust decision making is an iterative, quantitative, decision support methodology designed to help policy makers identify strategies that are robust, that is, satisfying decision makers’ objectives in many plausible futures, rather than being optimal in any single estimate of the future. This project used robust decision making to analyse flood risk management in Ho Chi Minh City’s Nhieu Loc-Thi Nghe canal catchment area. It found that the soon-to-be-completed infrastructure may reduce risk in best estimates of future conditions, but it may not keep risk low in many other plausible futures. Thus, the infrastructure may not be sufficiently robust.
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.
By reducing the costs of environmental protection, technological change is important for promoting green growth. This entails both the creation of new technologies and more widespread deployment of existing green technologies. This paper reviews the literature on environmentally friendly technological change, with a focus on lessons relevant to developing countries. It begins with a discussion of the data available for measuring the various steps of technological change. It continues with a discussion of sources of environmental innovation. Given that most innovation is concentrated in a few rich countries, this leads to a discussion of the remaining role for lower-income countries, followed by a discussion of technology transfer. Because of the importance of market failures, the paper discusses the role of both technology policy and environmental policy for promoting environmentally friendly technological change. The review concludes with a discussion of what environmental economists can learn from other fields.
This paper examines the processes used in the United States and Mexico to assess the economic costs and benefits of environmental improvement, the kinds of information obtained from these procedures, and the additional knowledge that is needed about both elements to improve understanding of the problems and prospects of advancing a green growth agenda. Because environmental and other development needs are large and resources are limited, it is important to choose the best projects, those with the highest returns on both public investments and private resources harnessed by regulation. The United States is a well-recognized leader in the use of quantitative methods to evaluate options for environmental regulation and policy. Mexico represents a case where a country has made clear advances in reforming its economy and in introducing transparency in its regulatory processes for environmental and other policy areas.
This paper surveys the state of knowledge about the trade-related environmental consequences of a country's development strategy along three channels: (i) direct trade-environment linkages (overexploitation of natural resources and trade-related transport costs); (ii) 'virtual trade' in emissions resulting from production activities; and (iii) the product mix attributes of a 'green-growth' strategy (environmentally preferable products and goods for environmental management). Trade exacerbates over-exploitation of natural resources in weak institutional environments, but there is little evidence that differences in environmental policies across countries has led to significant 'pollution havens.' Trade policies to 'level the playing field' would be ineffective and result in destructive conflicts in the World Trade Organization. Lack of progress at the Doha Round suggests the need to modify the current system of global policy making.
The paper aims to highlight some of the most important implementation issues associated with the greening of global value chains with special attention given to how public policies and business strategies can support each other in meeting the challenge, particularly in developing countries. This requires a systemic view of global value chains that includes downstream supply chains and explicitly takes into account the relationships between regular members (raw materials providers, component manufacturers, and assembly plants, notably) and their clean-tech suppliers. It also involves a careful description of the business landscapes of global value chains as well as reliable environmental metrics and data, carefully examining how these can be shared among global value chain members and their stakeholders.
Using novel data on patents, trade of equipment goods, and foreign direct investments and insights from the economic literature, the paper seeks to lay out the state of knowledge on the role of innovation and the diffusion of technologies in the greening of global value chains as well as some of the main policy issues. A special emphasis is put on developing countries -- distinguishing emerging economies and least-developed countries -- and on climate-mitigation technologies. Emerging economies are already reasonably well integrated in the global economy. As a consequence, technologies flow in through the imports of capital goods and local investments by multinational enterprises owning technologies. Pushing further technology transfer requires strengthening intellectual property rights, lowering barriers to trade and investments and improving technological absorptive capacities. In contrast, their role in innovation is limited. Standard tools of innovation policy - public research and development, public support to private research and development, better access to finance - should develop.
This joint study by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) highlights that the transformation to a greener economy could generate 15 to 60 million additional jobs globally over the next two decades and lift tens of millions of workers out of poverty. The report documents evidence that for countries at all levels of development the drive towards environmental sustainability and greener economies is gaining momentum. The study indicates that job growth has been particularly strong in the renewable energy sector, with a global increase of 21 per cent per annum. As a result, the sector now employs close to 5 million workers; more than double the number employed only a few years ago.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.
Guide dealing with the process of measuring the carbon footprint of products along the value chain, known as Product Carbon Footprints (PCFs), in the agri-food sector - provides an introduction to (PCF); outlines various types of PCF schemes and initiatives; describes steps involved in calculating PCFs, illustrating each step through case study examples; presents methodological issues and problems in calculating PCFs with a focus on data, uncertainty and issues particularly relevant to developing countries; gives an overview of potential mitigation measures; appendices include links to relevant websites, a glossary of related terms, and a list of frequently asked questions.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.
Agriculture accounts for 13 per cent of global GHG emissions. This rises to approximately 30 per cent if land clearance for farming, agrochemical production and trade in agricultural and food products are attributed to the sector. Market based mechanisms (carbon tax, cap and trade, payment for environmental services) and voluntary mitigation measures (carbon labelling and food miles) are reviewed for their effectiveness (if they reduce emissions), efficiency (the costs of the measures) and equity (fairness to suppliers). Measures to reduce agricultural emissions are limited in their effectiveness and efficiency by the technical difficulty and high costs of measuring, reporting and verification. However, pricing carbon would be effective in internalizing negative externalities in the transport, processing, retail and consumer purchase and preparation of food. The Global Trade Analysis Project (GTAP) model is used to illustrate that a US$ 40 carbon tax implemented in the EU would have little negative impact on developing country exporters of agricultural products due to their low carbon intensity.