Sea-level rise threatens low-lying areas around the world’s coasts with increased coastal flooding during extreme sea level events during storms. One response to this challenge is to build or upgrade coastal flood defences as exemplified by the Netherlands, New Orleans or much of the Chinese coast. In this paper the authors examine the potential investment costs of such an adaptation strategy applied globally over the 21st Century for sea-level rise scenarios consistent with the RCP2.6 and RCP8.5 emissions and the SSP2 socio-economic scenarios. Results are reported at the scale of World Bank Regions and the globe. This considers several contrasting scenarios of protection strategies as defined below. The DIVA model framework for coastal analysis is used to perform the analysis.
Some 25 years have elapsed since international financial institutions espoused a package of power sector reform measures that became known as the Washington Consensus. This package encompassed the establishment of autonomous regulatory entities, the vertical and horizontal unbundling of integrated national monopoly utilities, private sector participation in generation and distribution, and eventually the introduction of competition into power generation and even retail services. Exploiting a unique new data set on the timing and scope of power sector reforms adopted by 88 countries across the developing world over 25 years, this paper seeks to improve understanding of the uptake, diffusion, packaging, and sequencing of power sector reforms, and the extent to which they were affected by the economic and political characteristics of the countries concerned. The analysis focuses on describing the patterns of reform without judging their desirability or evaluating their impact. The paper finds that following rapid diffusion during 1995–2005, the spread of power sector reforms slowed significantly in 2005–15.
Nature-based solutions simultaneously provide environmental, social and economic benefits by bringing more nature and natural features and processes into cities, landscapes and seascapes. The Horizon 2020 Expert Group on ‘Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities’ was established under the 2014 Work Programme for the Societal Challenge “Climate action, environment, resource efficiency and raw materials”. For this report, renowned experts engaged in forward-looking reflection on future orientations for EU Research and Innovation for Nature-Based Solutions and Re-Naturing Cities.
An EU Research & Innovation (R&I) agenda on nature-based solutions will enable Europe to become a world leader both in R&I and in the growing market for nature-based solutions. For this, the evidence base for the effectiveness of nature-based solutions needs to be developed and then used to implement solutions.
Transportation mode choices, distances traveled and resulting CO2 emissions are influenced by transport infrastructures. The latter will either lock-in transport patterns in high-emitting modes or accompany low-carbon pathways. At the same time, future mobility demand increase requires rapid build-up of new infrastructures and upgrade of existing ones. Here the authors quantify investments needs for transport infrastructures over time to reach both development and climate objectives in different world regions. Investments needs between world regions are compared and the main factors determining investment needs for each region are analyzed. To do so, the authors build an ensemble of socio-economic scenarios with the integrated assessment model Imaclim-R combining alternatives on model parameters determining mobility patterns. The authors estimate the investments consistent with the passengers and freight transportation trends in the scenarios and identify their main determinants.
