As the Earth’s average surface temperatures rise, so do the associated costs. Because marginalised communities and groups (e.g., women, immigrants, the elderly, the disabled) are more exposed to climatic risk, the costs of climate change are more difficult for them. Women, in particular, are structurally vulnerable, and climate change can worsen existing gender-based inequities that keep them impoverished and marginalised. Climate finance (‘financial flows mobilised by industrialised country governments and private entities that support climate change mitigation and adaptation in developing countries’) can catalyse the much-needed transition to zero-carbon and climate-resilient development while also fostering equitable social policy, including gender equality and women’s empowerment. While the recent integration of gender considerations into key multilateral climate finance mechanisms, including the recently operationalized Green Climate Fund, are steps in the right direction, gender considerations have yet to be effectively mainstreamed in ongoing climate change programmes and activities, and national planning.
The market for green bonds has risen from USD 3 billion in 2011 to USD 95 billion in issuance in 2016. For policy makers, the report proposes a framework for understanding potential directions of bond market evolution, increased convergence of rules and definitions, and quantitative analysis of the potential contribution that bond markets can make to a low-carbon transition.
This report describes the development of the green bond market as an innovative instrument for green finance and provides a review of policy actions and options to promote further market development and growth. The report provides an overview of global green bond market developments to date, barriers to growth, policy tools that can be applied to scale the market further, and quantitative scenarios for green bond market growth from 2015 to 2035.
The new Agenda for Sustainable Development, which aims to end poverty and promote well-being and prosperity while safeguarding ecological systems of the planet by 2030, has placed a much-needed emphasis on energy access and gender equality, elevating them as stand-alone sustainable development goals (SDGs). Similarly, there is now an increasing appreciation in international development discourses of the role of energy as a conduit for redressing historic gender inequities. Yet, energy poverty is still pervasive – one in five people in Africa and South Asia do not have access to electricity, and close to 3 billion people (40 percent of the global population) burn solid fuels such as wood, charcoal, animal waste or crop residues in open fires or inefficient stoves for their daily cooking and heating. As we transition into the 2030 development agenda, serious effort is needed to move beyond understanding the importance of both energy access and gender equality to viewing both as central to questions of sustainability, efficiency and effectiveness in the energy sector.
After decades of regulation and investment to reduce point source water pollution, OECD countries still face water quality challenges (e.g. eutrophication) from diffuse agricultural and urban sources of pollution, i.e. pollution from surface runoff, soil filtration and atmospheric deposition. The relative lack of progress reflects the complexities of controlling multiple pollutants from multiple sources, their high spatial and temporal variability, the associated transactions costs, and limited political acceptability of regulatory measures.
The OECD report Diffuse Pollution, Degraded Waters: Emerging Policy Solutions (OECD, 2017) outlines the water quality challenges facing OECD countries today. It presents a range of policy instruments and innovative case studies of diffuse pollution control and concludes with an integrated policy framework to tackle this challenge. An optimal approach will likely entail a mix of policy interventions reflecting the basic OECD principles of water quality management – pollution prevention, treatment at source, the polluter pays and the beneficiary pays principles, equity, and policy coherence.
Global Trends in Renewable Energy Investment 2017, published on April 6th by UN Environment, the Frankfurt School-UNEP Collaborating Centre, and Bloomberg New Energy Finance, finds that all investments in renewables totalled $241.6 billion (excluding large hydro). These investments added 138.5 gigawatts to global power capacity in 2016, up 9 percent from the 127.5 gigawatts added the year before.
Investment in renewables capacity was roughly double that in fossil fuel generation; the corresponding new capacity from renewables was equivalent to 55 percent of all new power, the highest to date. The proportion of electricity coming from renewables excluding large hydro rose from 10.3 per cent to 11.3 per cent. This prevented the emission of an estimated 1.7 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide.