This compendium explores greening the economy on four levels – individual, business, city, and nation. It looks at the relationships between these levels and gives many practical examples of the complexities and solutions across the levels. Scandinavia, a pioneering place advancing sustainability and combating climate change, is a unique starting point for learning about greening economies. The study includes many initiatives implemented in Scandinavia since the 1970s that are all potentially useful for other countries and contexts. Throughout this compendium, the user will find many examples with links to relevant websites, documents and films.
The success of international efforts to manage climate change depends on the participation of emerging economies. This book uses a comparative study of two of the most important, India and South Africa, to reveal new insights into managing climate change on a global scale.
The book provides a unique in-depth analysis of how these two countries are dealing with climate change at both national and province levels, from India’s advances in solar and wind energy development to South Africa’s efforts to introduce a carbon tax. Using the innovative theoretical framework of climate knowledge systems, it explores how people in India and South Africa engage with one other, learn and act by forming communities of practice. The book identifies the drivers and barriers of climate governance, showing how different forms of scientific, technological, normative and pragmatic knowledge can aid climate governance and analysing how the underlying mind-set that guides climate action in these countries is changing.
The world today is facing the worst economic and environmental crises in generations. Hence, we need policies that can stimulate recovery and at the same time reach the sustainability. Many organisations and experts have advocated for a 'green recovery', where the economic crisis should be grasped by governments as an opportunity to reduce carbon dependency and put economies on a path of 'green growth' by using green stimulus packages. Many papers and international reports advocate that the renewable energy sector is an essential step in the path of green recovery. The main aim of this paper is to review a selection of responses to the double crisis by international institutions and to focus on the achievements made in the renewable energy sector.
As the world’s most populous region and the most vulnerable to climate risks, Asia is at the centre of a paradigm shift towards low carbon green growth. This shift must incorporate economic and social inclusion, and environmental sustainability in the strategic policy making and implementation. Many developing Asian economies have started this paradigm shift, bringing clean energy access to poor, stressing industrial competitiveness, developing green technology markets, and supporting decent job generation. What has been the initial experience with the paradigm shift? What can policy-makers learn from the experience and further advance the policy agenda? How can an action focussed approach be structured to support the continuing policy learning and advancement?
Shifting our fossil-fuelled civilisation to clean modes of production and consumption requires deep transformations in our energy and economic systems. Innovation in physical technologies and social behaviours is key to this transformation. But innovation has not been at the heart of economic models of climate change. This paper reviews the state of the art on the economics of innovation, applies recent insights to climate change. The core insight is that technological innovation is a path-dependent process in which history and expectations matter greatly in determining eventual outcomes.