Climate-related disasters have inflicted increasingly high losses on developing countries, and with climate change, these losses are likely to worsen. Improving country resilience against climate risks is therefore vital for achieving poverty reduction and economic development goals.
This report discusses the current state of knowledge on how to build climate resilience in developing countries. It argues that climate-resilient development requires moving beyond the climate-proofing of existing development pathways, to consider economic development objectives and resilience priorities in parallel. Achieving this will require political vision and a clear understanding of the relation between climate and development, as well as an adapted institutional set-up, financing arrangements, and progress monitoring and evaluation. The report also discusses two priorities for climate-resilient development: disaster risk management and the involvement of the private sector.
Start-up firms play a crucial role in bringing to the market the innovations needed to move to a greener growth path. Risk finance is essential for allowing new ventures to commercialise new ideas and grow, especially in emerging sectors. Still, very little is known about the drivers and the characteristics of risk finance in the green sector. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed description of risk finance in the green sector across 29 OECD and BRIICS countries over the period 2005-2010 and identifying the role that policies might have in shaping high-growth investments in this sector. Results are drawn from a comprehensive deal-level database of businesses seeking financing in the green industry combined with indicators of renewable policies and government R&D expenditures.
This paper summarizes the additional uncertainty that is created by climate change, and reviews the tools that are available to project climate change (including downscaling techniques) and to assess and quantify the corresponding uncertainty.
Assuming that climate change and other deep uncertainties cannot be eliminated over the short term (and probably even over the longer term), it then summarizes existing decision-making methodologies that are able to deal with climate-related uncertainty, namely cost-benefit analysis under uncertainty, cost-benefit analysis with real options, robust decision making, and climate informed decision analysis. It also provides examples of applications of these methodologies, highlighting their pros and cons and their domain of applicability. The paper concludes that it is impossible to define the “best” solution or to prescribe any particular methodology in general.
Instead, a menu of methodologies is required, together with some indications on which strategies are most appropriate in which contexts.
The report shows evidence of the potential benefits of adopting sustainability as a business strategy. It also shows a dramatic shift in banks' awareness of these benefits. The report argues that banks can tap vast benefits by reassessing their business practices and engaging in sustainability-oriented risk management and product development. The report provides practical examples of 14 financial institutions in 12 countries that have taken concrete steps to integrate social and environmental sustainability into their policies, practices, products, and services.
Key findings from the report include:
This report describes an evolving policy landscape in Asia and the Pacific characterised by a changing economic reality, rising demand for resources, increasingly apparent impacts of climate change and increased risk and uncertainty. It provides insights into Asian and Pacific resource use trends and outlines key actions that governments can pursue to help bring economic growth strategies in closer alignment with the objective of sustainable development. It also provides examples of strategies for improving resilience to help deal with the increasing levels of risk faced by societies and economies. The report is the product of a combined effort by three institutions: the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
This summary was prepared by Eldis.