This paper focuses on how developing countries can change the way they prepare for disasters so they are better equipped to sustain economic growth. It discusses the importance of considering the goals of key decision makers and the need to understand the perceptions, systematics biases, and heuristics used by the relevant interested parties (the affected public, private and public sector organizations, and nongovernmental organizations) in choosing between alternatives. The paper highlights the importance of undertaking benefit-cost analysis to evaluate disaster risk reduction measures, recognizing that decision makers might not make meaningful use of this policy tool given their behavioral biases and simplified heuristics. To address these issues, the authors propose green growth strategies that involve multi-year contracts coupled with short-term incentives that have a chance of being implemented. The strategies focus on the role of multi-year micro-insurance, long-term loans, and multi-year catastrophe bonds that reflect the institutional arrangements in the developing country.
This paper reviews the challenges and opportunities raised by international trade for developing countries considering a green growth strategy. A key concern is the effect of environmental policies on international competitiveness. For production-generated pollution, there is evidence that stringent environmental policy reduces some indicators of competitiveness, but the effect is small in most sectors. However, tightening up environmental standards is unlikely to reduce international competitiveness when pollution is generated by consumption. And where depletion of natural capital is a threat, effective environmental policy is an important component of a policy aimed at developing long-run international competitiveness. The effects of trade on environmental policy, the interaction between trade and technology transfer, and the interaction between trade and transboundary environmental problems are also reviewed. An emerging issue is the potential use of border taxes to curtail carbon leakage. The paper discusses some of the possible responses by developing countries.
This report examines how biodiversity co-benefits in REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) can be enhanced, both at the design and implementation level. It discusses potential biodiversity implications of different REDD design options that have been put forward in the international climate change negotiations and proceeds by examining how the creation of additional biodiversity-specific incentives could be used to complement a REDD mechanism, so as to target biodiversity benefits directly.
This report is part of the United Nations Development Programme’s Global Environment Facility’s (UNDP-GEF) efforts to codify and share lessons learnt from how scarce public resources can be used to catalyse larger private financial flows for renewable energy. It provides an overview of UNDP-GEF projects in 14 developing countries which are supporting the development of national renewable energy policies based around feed-in tariffs and related instruments. In these activities UNDP-GEF assists developing countries to assess key risks and barriers to technology diffusion and then to identify a mix of policy and financial de-risking measures to remove these barriers and drive investment. This approach is illustrated through three case studies in Uruguay, Mauritius and Kazakhstan. The report finds that a key challenge for policy makers is to create the conditions to make renewable energy attractive to investors and utilities without jeopardising the attainment of other development goals.
This summary was prepared by Eldis.
This knowledge product is part of the work undertaken by the Bank in the context of its new Strategy 2013-2022, whose twin objectives are “inclusive and increasingly green growth”. Following a request from the Sierra Leonean authorities, this document was designed to assist government officials and national stakeholders to consider key challenges and identify major opportunities for mainstreaming inclusive green growth into the 2013–2018 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, known as the “Agenda for Prosperity”. The document has been prepared in consultation with the Sierra Leonean stakeholders. The main document is structured as follows: Section 1 outlines principles of green growth with relevance to the specific context of Sierra Leone. Section 2 outlines the main development opportunities and challenges of Sierra Leone, structured along the three green growth pillars the country has identified. Section 3 outlines institutional and policy challenges, as well as a possible framework for green growth. Section 4 summarizes development priorities identified in the A4P, and identifies green growth options in the A4P pillars.