Managing a Sustainable Transition to a Low-carbon Society: The socio-economic impacts of mitigation policies policy brief looks at how to identify and manage the expected and unintended socio-economic impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) mitigation policies. It discusses the scope of mitigation actions which will reduce GHG emissions and their impacts, and identifies “flanking measures" to manage the undesirable socio-economic impacts of mitigation actions, including distributional impacts.
Climate change, as a great challenge facing humanity, needs to be addressed urgently, with great efficacy and efficiency. But it also needs to be addressed in a sustainable way, which implies that we must understand and manage as far as possible all impacts, expected and unexpected, positive and negative, domestic and international.
In developed countries, while there are positive effects, some will see the issue of transition through the lens of competitiveness, and its social and economic impacts—domestic economic displacement and disorderly (energy) markets, with negative impacts from changed trade flows and investment patterns. Even if, at first blush, many actions can be seen as domestic measures, they can also impact other countries, in particular, developing ones, which is sometimes difficult to predict upfront. Developed countries, in undertaking the transition to a low-GHG economy, will want to put in place a safety net for both the social and economic impacts of these measures, through a variety of instruments.