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Global Environmental Change (Elsevier)

The green growth concept has both strategic and analytical merit. It has strategic merit by turning a negative debate about a costly constraint (on emissions) into a narrative about potentially attractive opportunities. Authors like Barrett believe that this might change the dynamics of the international negotiations.

Analytically, green growth applies a new, richer and more diverse set of economic tools to a burning issue. This has implications on policy design. The ‘green growth’ narrative reinforces, rather than diminishes, the need for collective action. The economic opportunities that green growth may bring do depend on a joint understanding by a sufficiently large number of players that this is the way to go. This makes green growth a classic collective action problem.

London School of Economics and Political Science
Can directed technical change be used to combat climate change? This paper constructs new firm-level panel data on auto industry innovation distinguishing between “dirty” (internal combustion engine) and “clean” (e.g. electric and hybrid) patents across 80 countries over several decades. It shows that firms tend to innovate relatively more in clean technologies when they face higher tax-inclusive fuel prices. Furthermore, there is path dependence in the type of innovation both from aggregate spillovers and from the firm’s own innovation history. Using this model this paper simultaes the increases in carbon taxes needed to allow clean to overtake dirty technologies.
Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI)
United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment)

A global climate agreement is crucial in keeping global warming below the target of maximum 2 degree increase in this century. This will require enhanced ambitions by all Parties and need transformational change towards sustainable, low carbon development and green growth. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and its UNEP Risø Centre have in cooperation with the Global Green Growth Institute (GGGI) prepared the Perspectives 2013 to respond to this global challenge. The publication focuses on how elements of a new climate agreement can contribute to close the ‘emissions gap’. Six articles have been invited to address crucial aspects of a possible new agreement;

International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Land degradation has not been comprehensively addressed at the global level or in developing countries. A suitable economic framework that could guide investments and institutional action is lacking. This study aims to overcome this deficiency and to provide a framework for a global assessment based on a consideration of the costs of action versus inaction regarding desertification, land degradation, and drought (DLDD). Most of the studies on the costs of land degradation (mainly limited to soil erosion) give cost estimates of less than 1 percent up to about 10 percent of the agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) for various countries worldwide. But the indirect costs of DLDD on the economy (national income), as well as their socioeconomic consequences (particularly poverty impacts), must be accounted for, too. Despite the numerous challenges, a global assessment of the costs of action and inaction against DLDD is possible, urgent, and necessary. This study provides a framework for such a global assessment and provides insights from some related country studies.

Center for Development Research (ZEF)
International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)

Healthy land ecosystems are essential to sustainable development, including food security and improved livelihoods. Yet, their key services have usually been taken for granted and their true value underrated, leading to land degradation becoming a critical global problem. This pattern of undervaluation of lands is about to change in view of the rapidly rising land prices, which is the result of increasing shortage of land and high output prices. Despite the urgent need for preventing and reversing land degradation, the problem has yet to be appropriately addressed. Policy actions for sustainable land management are lacking, and a policy framework for action is missing. Such a framework for policy action needs to be supported by evidence-based and action-oriented research. The Economics of Land Degradation (ELD) initiative seeks to develop such a science basis for policy actions to address land degradation.