The concept of payments for ecosystem services (PES) has recently emerged as a promising tool for enhancing or safeguarding the provision of ecosystem services (ES). Although the concept has been extensively scrutinized in terms of its potential positive and negative impacts on the poor in developing countries, less attention has been paid to examining the role of PES in the context of adaptation to climate change. PES has some potential to contribute to adaptation to climate change, but there are also risks that it could undermine adaptation efforts. In order to maximize synergies and minimize trade-offs between PES and adaptation, it is important that the conceptual links between both are made explicit. The present article presents the main conceptual links between PES and adaptation to climate change and suggests ways of making PES pro-poor and pro-adaptation.
Flood exposure is increasing in coastal cities owing to growing populations and assets, the changing climate, and subsidence. This article provides a quantification of present and future flood losses in the 136 largest coastal cities. Using a new database of urban protection and different assumptions on adaptation, we account for existing and future flood defences. Average global flood losses in 2005 are estimated to be approximately US$ 6 billion per year, increasing to US$ 52 billion by 2050 with projected socio-economic change alone. With climate change and subsidence, present protection will need to be upgraded to avoid unacceptable losses of US$ 1 trillion or more per year. Even if adaptation investments maintain constant flood probability, subsidence and sea-level rise will increase global flood losses to US$ 60–63 billion per year in 2050. To maintain present flood risk, adaptation will need to reduce flood probabilities below present values. In this case, the magnitude of losses when floods do occur would increase, often by more than 50 per cent, making it critical to also prepare for larger disasters than we experience today.
This report sets out the challenge for freshwater in a changing climate and provides policy guidance on how to navigate this new "waterscape". It highlights the range of expected changes in the water cycle and the challenge of making practical, on-site adaptation decisions for water. The report offers policymakers a risk-based approach to better "know", "target" and "manage" water risks and proposes policy guidelines to prioritise action and improve the efficiency, timeliness and equity of adaptation responses. The report also highlights general trends and good practices drawn from the OECD Survey of Policies on Water and Climate Change Adaptation, covering all 34 member countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Mexico, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States) and the European Commission.
This toolkit focuses on inclusive green growth—growth that not only helps green economies, but also helps move towards sustainable development by ensuring environmental sustainability contributes to, or at least does not come at the expense of, social progress. While there is good reason to think that improved environmental performance will benefit the poorest and most vulnerable, green growth policies must be carefully designed to maximise benefits and minimise costs for them, particularly during the transition. There is thus a critical need for policy design that also ensures that skills are upgraded and that jobs are decent, that vulnerable groups are not marginalised or left behind, and that revenues from fiscal reforms are also channeled into broader social protection and health measures.
A number of the tools that will be mobilised to implement inclusive green growth policies are "classic" public management tools, but this document focuses only on the most relevant instruments vis-à-vis green growth in developing countries, as these instruments are widely known and implemented the world over. What this toolkit aims for instead is to provide policy-makers with:
The U.S. Congress charged the National Academies with conducting a review of the Internal Revenue Code to identify the types of and specific tax provisions that have the largest effects on carbon and other greenhouse gas emissions and to estimate the magnitude of those effects. To address such a broad charge, the National Academies appointed a committee composed of experts in tax policy, energy and environmental modeling, economics, environmental law, climate science, and related areas.