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Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung

This paper outlines a conceptual and policy approach to bringing social concerns to the forefront of green economy and sustainable development debates. It examines a wide range of social problems and other issues associated with green economy, reasserting that any development transformation must be both green and fair; leading to a green society not just a green economy. However, different transition pathways exist, each with different developmental implications. This paper addresses the key role of social policy, agency and participation in crafting transition paths that are green and fair. A comprehensive or transformative social policy is argued to play a key role in mitigating unfair consequences, influencing behaviour and transforming patterns of inequality. This paper concludes by highlighting issues of fragmentation associated with knowledge, institutional arrangements and socil agency, and suggests the need for 'joined-up analysis, policy and action'. 

This summary was prepared by Eldis.

Environment for Development Initiative (EfD)

This book provides a deep and systematic look at the opportunities for and constraints to investments in sustainable agriculture in East Africa, offering important insights into what works and how to analyse agricultural investments in one of the poorest regions of the world. 

The book critically examines the reasons behind East Africa's stagnant agricultural productivity over the past forty-five years, using the primary lens of investments in fertilisers, seeds, and sustainable land management technologies. These investment have a tremendous impact on production volume, ultimately affecting the income of millions of families throughout the region.

This book provides case studies on Kenya and Ethiopia. 

Ecological Economics (Elsevier)
This paper Does Eco-Certification have Environmental Benefits?found that organic certification improves coffee growers' environmental performance.
Environment for Development Initiative (EfD)

This book challenges the conventional wisdom that gasoline taxation, an important and much-debated instrument of climate policy, has a disproportionately detrimental effect on poor people. Increased fuel taxes carry the potential to mitigate carbon emissions, reduce congestion, and improve local urban environment. As such, higher gasoline taxes could prove to be a fundamental part of any climate action plan. However, they have been resisted by powerful lobbies that have persuaded people that increased fuel taxation would be regressive. Reporting on examples of over two dozen countries, this book sets out to empirically investigate this claim. The authors conclude that while there may be some slight regressivity in some high-income countries, as a general rule, fuel taxation is a progressive policy particularly in low income countries. Rich countries can correct for regressivity by cutting back on other taxes that adversely affect poor people, or by spending more money on services for the poor. Meanwhile, in low-income countries, poor people spend a very small share of their money on fuel for transport.

Environment for Development Initiative (EfD)
This book is an attempt to encourage more widespread and careful use of economic policy instruments. It compares the accumulated experiences of the use of economic policy instruments in the U.S. and Europe, as well as in rich and poor countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Ambitious in scope, it discusses the design of instruments that can be employed in any country in a wide range of contexts, including transportation, industrial pollution, water pricing, waste, fisheries, forests, and agriculture. 
 
While deeply rooted in economics, Policy Instruments for Environmental and Natural Resource Management is informed by political, legal, ecological, and psychological research. The new edition enhances what has already been widely hailed as a highly innovative work. The book includes greatly expanded coverage of climate change, covering aspects related to policy design, international equity and discounting, voluntary carbon markets, permit trading in United States, and the Clean Development Mechanism. Focusing ever more on leading ideas in both theory and policy, the new edition brings experimental economics into the main of its discussions.