As cities are growing in terms of population and physical size, their contributions to national GDP are also increasing due to increased economic activities in urban areas. With this greater role of the urban sector, the demand for urban transportation – passenger and freight has increased many folds in the recent years. With the growth or urban economies, the living conditions and lifestyles of the city people are also changing. As income of the upper and middle class people in the city is increasing, the ownership of private vehicles is increasing rapidly. The Asian cities which do not have any growth management plan for controlling this rapid increase in personal vehicles are experiencing severe traffic congestion and other problems including air pollution, loss of personal and corporate productivity, high cost of transport and poor quality of life. Traffic congestion and air pollution have a negative impact on GDP as it imposes a significant cost in terms of both health and productivity. The traditional way of solving traffic congestion is to increase capacity of the road network.
Regardless of average income, cities and towns have been acting as the engines of economic growth in the Asia-Pacific region, which now hosts half of the world’s mega-cities. New configurations like mega urban regions, urban corridors and city-regions testify to the close links between urban prosperity and new patterns of spatio-economic activity. Productivity and creativity now enable some Asian-Pacific cities to diversify away from manufacturing and move into the global ‘knowledge economy’. These remarkable achievements have enabled Asia-Pacific to take the lead in socio-economic progress, too, with significant reductions in extreme poverty as well as improved conditions for slum-dwellers, an area where some countries have already reached the Millennium Development Goals.
Developing countries around the world are projected to account for around 87 per cent of the world’s primary energy demand growth by 2030. Much of this growth in energy demand will occur in Asia which is witnessing rising population, high economic growth and rapid urbanization. Many countries are averse to the notion of energy conservation and efficiency and consider it their priority to first ensure economic growth and deal with energy saving later. A well-conceived energy efficiency strategy will not only allow them to achieve their goal with much lower energy consumption but also enable them to improve the living standard and quality of life, while making human and financial resources available for other aspects of societal development such as education and healthcare.
Climate change is one of the greatest environmental issues of our time and the Asia-Pacific region is already experiencing its adverse impacts. Studies suggest that the costs of inaction on reducing the consumption of fossil fuels, the main source of climate change, would be many times the costs of action. This report stresses the need to take decisive steps quickly to get the developing countries in this region on course to make inroads in the global effort to combat climate change and achieve sustainable development and green growth. The course of action is a low-carbon development path. The energy system is the main contributor to climate change, representing a predominate share of total greenhouse gases (GHG) emissions and consequently the effort to tackle climate change has become a major driver of energy policy. The current level of emissions from fossil fuels, are unsustainable and threaten the environment on both local and global scales. Reducing the carbon intensity of energy emitted per unit of energy consumed is a key objective in reaching long- term climate goals. As long as the primary energy mix is biased towards fossil fuels, this would be difficult to achieve.
Start-up firms play a crucial role in bringing to the market the innovations needed to move to a greener growth path. Risk finance is essential for allowing new ventures to commercialise new ideas and grow, especially in emerging sectors. Still, very little is known about the drivers and the characteristics of risk finance in the green sector. This paper aims to fill this gap by providing a detailed description of risk finance in the green sector across 29 OECD and BRIICS countries over the period 2005-2010 and identifying the role that policies might have in shaping high-growth investments in this sector. Results are drawn from a comprehensive deal-level database of businesses seeking financing in the green industry combined with indicators of renewable policies and government R&D expenditures.