This report reviews the economic and environmental consequences of resource inefficiency in Asia and the Pacific and some of its underlying causes. It examines a range of technical, policy, and institutional responses to encourage corporations and consumers alike to adopt more resource-efficient behaviors, with particular attention to the vital role governments must play in creating incentive structures, encouraging research and development for new technologies, improving institutions and information exchange, and other measures to move the region’s economies toward greater resource efficiency. This analysis is a contribution to the global G8 3R Initiative, which seeks to promote the “reduce, reuse, recycle” approach to waste management. While many of the specific strategies described are not new, the report should contribute to an understanding of the underlying reasons behind resource inefficiency, tools for its analysis, and specific interventions tailored to the Asia and Pacific context.
The report includes case studies from China, India, Japan, Lao, Nepal, Philippines and Thailand.
This document is a review of the low carbon growth studies conducted in six emerging economies: Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa. These countries, with the help of the Energy Sector Management Assistance Programme (ESMAP), have initiated country specific studies to assess development goals in conjunction with greenhouse gas mitigation opportunities. The aim is to present a framework for other countries who wish to implement studies of their own.
The paper is structured to mirror the seven step process of establishing a low carbon growth country study.
This paper highlights the implications of the current separation of the discourses on private climate finance (PCF) and on subsidies, and the opportunities that exist to unlock climate-compatible investment by linking these fields.
Though climate finance aims to enable climate compatible development (CCD), this paper points out that, within developing countries, subsidies to fossil fuels (alone) currently dwarf any efforts toward CCD through climate finance.
The Environmental Stewardship Strategy presents a new corporate environmental management approach – one that reflects the realities and implications of the host of global environmental challenges, while integrating these into a truly holistic, comprehensive strategy. The strategy was developed to provide guidance to companies on comprehensive environmental stewardship strategies to address issues such as climate change, water resource protection, deforestation, toxic waste, loss of biodiversity and long-term damage to ecosystems. While the 8-step strategy offers guidance on topics like innovation, cooperation, education and self-regulation, it also offers a framework for firms to facilitate a recommitment to and comprehensive implementation of the principles. The Environmental Stewardship Strategy builds on the success of Caring for Climate and the CEO Water Mandate programs, and encourages companies to facilitate a recommitment to and comprehensive implementation of the principles. The Strategy is informed by research, tested by practitioners and designed to help all corporate leaders generate value from successful management of its relationship with the environment.
This report debates the extent to which public-private partnerships (PPPs) are delivering value for money (VFM) in India. While VfM is traditionally interpreted to mean the lowest-priced alternative at the time of commissioning, in the context of sustainable development it is understood as value for money across the asset life cycle. This approach embodies the principles of “total cost of ownership” and “whole-life value”—accounting for the costs of planning, designing, building, operating and maintaining an asset. It can therefore be used to account for the medium- and long-term efficiency gains and cost reductions enabled by sustainable infrastructure.
The report's findings indicate that despite the best-in-class laws, policies, formal processes and institutional frameworks, PPPs in India might not be delivering VfM across asset life cycles. The report make policy recommendations on how to improve the existing safeguards, on how to move beyond the existing safeguards, and on leveraging existing infrastructure development funds so as to lower the cost of capital for sustainable infrastructure.