The Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020 and its Aichi Biodiversity Targets adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity has been recognised as setting the global framework for priority actions on biodiversity. The 2030 Agenda is consistent with other existing international commitments, including the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity. The SDGs and the Strategic Plan are mutually supportive and reinforcing, and therefore the implementation of one contributes to the achievement of the other.
According to available estimates, approximately one-third of all food produced in the world intended for human consumption is lost or wasted. This level of inefficiency in the global food system has significant economic, social, and environmental impacts. It amounts to economic losses of $940 billion per year. It means that more than a billion tonnes of food never gets consumed each year, while one in nine people remains undernourished. In addition, food loss and waste are responsible for an estimated 8 percent of annual greenhouse gas emissions; if it were a country, food loss and waste would be the third-largest emitter after China and the United States.
The government of India aims to dramatically increase the amount of installed renewable energy and is currently focused on arranging and facilitating the needed capital investment to achieve targets. In India there are fundamental challenges for renewable energy developers in the financial marketplace such as asset-liability mismatch, high interest rates and sector limits. Green Bonds are standard, fixed-income financial instruments (bonds) where the proceeds are exclusively utilized for financing climate change mitigation or adaptation related projects or programs.This report provides information on the use of Green Bonds as a key financial instrument to provide Indian renewable energy project developers access to scalable, long-term, low-cost debt capital from institutional investors. This report was prepared through the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy-Deployment (PACE-D) Technical Assistant (TA) Program which is funded by USAID.
The United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted in September 2015, includes Sustainable Development Goals with respect to climate change (SDG 13) and to ensuring access to sustainable energy (SDG 7). Questions of mitigation and adaptation to climate change are furthermore integrated throughout the Agenda. This think piece explores how trade rules, in particular, those established at the multilateral level, could support progress towards the 2030 Agenda’s objectives related to climate change and clean energy.
The authors focus on six key policy challenges at the intersection of trade policy and climate change and clean energy. They recommend prioritising policy actions in three areas: fossil fuel subsidies; clean energy subsidies; and access, dissemination, and transfer of climate-friendly technologies. The authors also suggest policy actions to tackle three other important issues: dealing with the political economy of local content requirements; pricing carbon nationally while tackling international competitiveness and carbon leakage concerns, and designing “carrots” and “sticks” for more ambitious action under climate clubs.