In 2013, following the UNEP Governing Council Decision and with the support of the government of China, UNEP began work to share the South’s various experiences and national-level initiatives for transitioning to sustainable and socially inclusive economies. This work culminated in 2015 when UNEP published a report, entitled Multiple Pathways to Sustainable Development: Initial Findings from the Global South, that highlighted four unique national initiatives: Living Well in Bolivia, Ecological Civilization in China, Green Economy in South Africa, and Sufficiency Economy in Thailand.
This report serves to build on that earlier publication by examining four additional approaches that have been adopted at the country or regional level: Circular Economy in the European Union (EU) and Germany, Natural Capital Accounting in Botswana, Payment for Ecosystem Services in Costa Rica, and Gross National Happiness in Bhutan. The purpose is to show that there is no “one size fits all” approach to sustainable development, but rather a range of concepts, methodologies, and tools that can be used, depending on the specific context.
The alleged capacity of Payment for Environmental Services (PES) to reach conservation policy goals, while reducing poverty in a cost-effective manner, makes it an extremely attractive development instrument for policymakers and international funding agencies. This article reconstructs the process of envisioning and building the National PES Strategy in Colombia. It reveals how this conservation policy has resulted from the mobilisation of the transnational/national PES epistemic community and its globally expanding discourse. The influential PES network generates internally defined standards of success that proceed without reference to empirical evidence as to the impacts of the implemented policies. PES adoption is influenced by regulatory instruments’ unsatisfactory outcomes, the ways in which market-environmentalist models induce profound indifference towards on-the-ground policy impacts, the discursive power and alignment properties of the PES policy epistemic community, and financial and political pressures by international banks and environmental NGOs.
The Coruh/Chorokhi river system is of great economic importance to both Turkey and Georgia because of its largely undeveloped but economically exploitable potential for hydropower. On both sides of the border a large number of hydropower projects are being implemented unilaterally in which private investors play the key role, following liberalisation of the energy sectors in Turkey and Georgia. This has been promoted in both countries, despite the resulting social and environmental costs, particularly in Turkey.
Negative effects – i.e., the changes in sedimentation and the river flow regimes – moving from upstream interventions in Turkey to downstream Georgia – have still not been resolved, and they will put electricity generation in Georgia at risk when the hydroelectricity plants start operating. This article explores regional disputes and the degree of cooperation that exists, and analyses the effect that the efforts of relevant actors to establish regional electricity trading are having on the current problems. The creation of a regional electricity market seems to be opening up a new avenue for cooperation also on water.
This report provides the first progress assessment of climate actions launched at the 2014 UN Climate Summit in New York. It considers the distribution and performance of climate actions along multiple dimensions that are relevant to both mitigation and adaptation. While it is too early for a conclusive assessment of the effectiveness of climate actions, this study makes a first and indispensable step toward such an assessment. Initial findings are encouraging. One year after their launch, most climate actions have performed well in terms of producing outputs, putting them on track to implementing their commitments in the coming years.