This paper has been developed to inform discussions on smart infrastructure development and financing as part of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) and climate processes in 2015. The article is designed to respond to five questions. First, why is a major increase in investments in better infrastructure essential to both development and climate goals? Second, what is holding back this investment? Third, how can the deployment of private capital into infrastructure investment be doubled? Fourth, what is the distinctive role of development banks in closing the infrastructure investment and financing gap? Fifth, how can official development assistance and climate finance reinforce each other?
This report, from the New Climate Economy, provides 10 practical recommendations to boost economic growth and reduce climate risk. These recommendations could deliver up to 96% of the emissions reductions required by 2030 to keep our planet on a pathway to keep global warming under 2 degrees celsius. And these are actions that would also deliver multiple economic benefits.
The report calls for stronger cooperation between governments, businesses, investors, cities and communities to drive economic growth in the emerging low-carbon economy. International and multistakeholder cooperation can scale up technological change, expand markets, reduce costs, address concerns about international competitiveness, spread best practice and increase the flows of finance.
The Little Green Data Book provides key environmental data for over 200 economies, based on the World Development Indicators 2015 and its online database. Over 50 indicators are used, organized into categories on: agriculture; forests and biodiversity; oceans; energy and emissions; water and sanitation; environment and health; and national accounting aggregates. Data is presented for the regions of East Asia and Pacific, Europe and Central Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, Middle East and North Africa, South Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
The 2015 edition uses two new air pollution indicators: mean annual exposure to suspended particulate matter less than 2.5 microns in diameter (PM2.5); and percentage of total population exposed to PM2.5 pollution above the World Health Organization (WHO) Air Quality Guidelines (AQG) value of an annual average of 10 microns per cubic meter. Previous editions used indicators focused on the larger particulates (PM10) and only on urban centers with more 100,000 persons.
Also incorporated this year, are estimates of the economic costs of air pollution, including household air pollution from cooking with solid fuels.
This report produced in co-operation between the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Energy Agency (IEA), the International Transport Forum (ITF) and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) identifies the misalignments between climate change objectives and policy and regulatory frameworks across a range of policy domains (investment, taxation, innovation and skills, trade, and adaptation) and activities at the heart of climate policy (electricity, urban mobility and rural land use).
Outside of countries’ core climate policies, many of the regulatory features of today’s economies have been built around the availability of fossil fuels and without any regard for the greenhouse gas emissions stemming from human activities. This report makes a diagnosis of these contradictions and points to means of solving them to support a more effective transition of all countries to a low-carbon economy.
This book explores the environmental competitiveness of 133 countries around the world, presenting an index evaluation system to facilitate a comparative analysis of environmental competitiveness on a global scale. This is a new way to measure competitiveness in the light of the contradiction between world economic development and environmental protection. Global environmental competitiveness covers five aspects: the ecological environment, resources environment, environmental management, environmental impacts and environmental coordination. The authors use longitudinal study and horizontal analysis, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis methods so as to conduct an in-depth study of theoretical, empirical and methodological issues of global environmental competitiveness.This book will appeal to scholars and professionals with an interest in environmental issues and environmental competitiveness at a global level, as well as those with an interest in each of the 133 countries analyzed in this text, including environmental policy makers in those countries.