Environmental impacts are increasing due to human activities. The overuse of the benefits nature provides us is the direct result of our failure to put a price on these benefits. One way of addressing this is to require environmental compensation.
This study provides an overview of key conditions for increased, flexible and cost-effective application of compensation. It shows that for a relatively small cost, society can make a significant investment in the provision of biodiversity and ecosystem services by requiring compensation.
The study outlines three main recommendations on how to increase the use of environmental compensation: stimulating supply of, and demand for compensation; clarifying guidelines and legal framework; and strengthening Nordic cooperation on compensation.
A green economy is one that results in improved human well-being and social equity, while significantly reducing environmental risks and ecological scarcities. In its simplest expression, a green economy can be thought of as one which is low carbon, resource efficient and socially inclusive. This report speaks to the multiple benefits – economic, health, security, social and environmental – that such an economic model can bring to humanity. An inclusive green economy (IGE) sees growth in income and employment from investments that reduce carbon emissions and pollution.
The IGE Narrative expands and deepens substantially the focus of UNEP's earlier work on green economy.
Negotiations on climate change have made little tangible progress since the early 1990s. Much of the failure to make diplomatic progress reflects that the problem is structurally extremely difficult to solve. This paper focuses on one among the many institutional reforms that could allow for more progress—making a greater effort in small groups, or “clubs.” Framing climate deals in smaller groups—designed in a way that encourages expansion of membership and linkages among groups over time—could allow for greater flexibility and reduce the effort and complexity of required deal making. This club approach to diplomacy would not eliminate the need to work in maxilateral, global forums such as the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Outlining the problems with the status quo, the paper identifies major tasks that clubs could perform. They could help to provide a forum for enthusiastic countries to “do the deals” that would get reluctant countries to make bigger efforts.
The long-standing reaction of the trade community to attempts to embroil trade law and policy in the resolution of the climate change issue has been to say, “Solve your own problems on the basis of your own agreed multilateral instruments, and when you have, if there are interfaces or overlaps between your regime and the trade regime, we will find means of resolving them constructively.” While this is understandable, it is rendered impractical, first by that an effective set of agreed international climate mitigation policies, which stand a chance of allowing the achievement of the agreed objectives, is probably as far away now as it has ever been; and second by that the development of domestic politics in both developed and developing countries has revealed trade to be in principle a major source of carbon and political leakage from any aggressive mitigation regime, and thus a serious constraint on national and international mitigation plans.
In the wake of the Copenhagen Accord in 2009 and amid frustration with the slow pace of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) talks, a number of bilateral and plurilateral efforts and technology initiatives has been launched to deal with international climate policy. Bilateral efforts such as the November 2014 joint announcement between the United States (US) and China have provided welcome momentum. These minilateral efforts, together with the broader multilateral ones, constitute the emerging “regime complex” for climate change. In such a world, ambition in climate action must come from national governments as well as from international agreements. For promoting such ambition, key tools include market-based mechanisms that cap emissions of carbon dioxide and other global warming pollutants, and allow nations and firms that reduce emissions below capped levels to save, sell, and trade surplus units of allowable emissions. Such systems are in effect today in more than 50 countries, states, cities, and provinces where almost a billion people live.