Browse Research

The focus of this paper World in Transition: Governing the Marine Heritage is on the rules governing the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans, and above all on how we can ensure that these rules are implemented.

Korea’s greenhouse gas emissions almost doubled between 1990 and 2005, the highest growth rate in the OECD area. Korea recently set a target of reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 relative to a “business as usual” baseline, implying a 4% cut from the 2005 level. Achieving this objective in a cost-effective manner requires moving from a strategy based on voluntary commitments by firms to market-based instruments. The priority is to establish a comprehensive cap-and-trade scheme, supplemented, if necessary, by carbon taxes in areas not covered by trading. Achieving a significant cut in emissions requires a shift from energy-intensive industries to low-carbon ones. Korea is strongly committed to promoting green growth through its Five-Year Plan, which envisages spending 2% of GDP per year through 2013. One challenge is to ensure that these expenditures are efficiently targeted so as to develop green technologies, while avoiding the risks inherent in industrial policy. 

Green skills, that is, skills needed in a low-carbon economy, will be required in all sectors and at all levels in the workforce as emerging economic activities create new (or renewed) occupations. Structural changes will realign sectors that are likely to decline as a result of the greening of the economy and workers will need to be retrained accordingly. This report outlines the role of skills and training policies as an important component of the ecological transformation process.

The working paper is a response to the call for the UN system to support countries interested in pursuing green economy policies by providing methodologies for their evaluation. It aims to provide guidance to policy analysts and advisers, and other stakeholders, who are involved in developing green economy policies by using indicators as a tool for identifying priority issues, formulating and assessing green economy policy options, and evaluating the performance of policy implementation. Emphasis is placed on policy options with “multiple dividends” across the environmental, social and economic dimensions of sustainable development.

This paper focuses on how to undertake energy subsidy reform in light of country experiences. The paper reviews the challenges arising from energy subsidies, emphasizing their fiscal costs, adverse macroeconomic and environmental impacts, and the regressive distribution of subsidy benefits. A novel feature of the paper is that it presents the most comprehensive estimates of energy subsidies available covering petroleum products, electricity, natural gas, and coal. A central objective of the paper is to learn from past subsidy reform experiences, both successful and otherwise, to identify key design features that can facilitate reform.

The paper draws on lessons from international reform experiences from 22 country case studies (covering 28 reform episodes) undertaken by IMF staff, which are provided in a supplement to this paper.