Tag: Green transition

Africa, Building resilience, Green transition

Strengthening the climate resilience of cities through cross-border co-operation

By Richard Clarke, Sahel and West Africa Club Secretariat (SWAC/OECD)

The southern nations of West Africa are beginning to experience the second and shorter of their rainy seasons, whilst those countries further north are seeing the end of theirs. For many the happiness of seeing these rains is mixed with anxieties from memories past and current realities. Exceptionally heavy seasonal rainfall in 2007, 2009, 2013 and 2017 saw several major rivers break their banks, causing destruction of houses, bridges, roads and crops, wrecking livelihoods and displacing vast swathes of the population.

In recent weeks, floods have severely hit parts of Burkina Faso, Ghana, Niger and Nigeria, leading to the death of at least 107 people and affecting hundreds of thousands. In Senegal, a state of emergency has been declared following heavy rainfalls and the death of four citizens, while in Chad nearly 200,000 people have been affected. Yet again, the urgent need for immediate action to mitigate and alleviate the effects of climate change has been exposed.

Continue reading “Strengthening the climate resilience of cities through cross-border co-operation”

Development Matters
Covid-19, Français, Natural Resources, New social contract

Une taxe climat européenne pourrait bénéficier aux pays exportateurs de pétrole

Par Håvard Halland, Economiste au Centre de développement de l’OCDE

Ce blog fait partie d’une série sur la lutte contre le COVID-19 dans les pays en voie de développement. Visitez la page dédiée de l’OCDE pour accéder aux données, analyses et recommandations de l’OCDE sur les impacts sanitaires, économiques, financiers et sociétaux de COVID-19 dans le monde.

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Pour relancer nos économies d’une manière durable dans le sillage de la crise due au Covid-19, l’instauration d’une tarification effective du carbone à l’échelle mondiale reste plus importante que jamais. Cependant, tant que les Etats ne parviendront pas à s’entendre sur la gravité des risques induits par le changement climatique, la mise en place d’un système mondial de taxation des gaz à effet de serre restera une perspective lointaine.

Le mécanisme d’« ajustement carbone aux frontières » envisagé par l’Union européenne (UE) pourrait toutefois être un premier pas vers une réallocation des investissements internationaux dans le sens souhaité. Ambitieux, les nouveaux objectifs climatiques de l’UE exigeront des réductions des émissions non seulement dans le secteur de l’énergie, mais aussi dans les secteurs à forte intensité énergétique comme les industries lourdes, la métallurgie, la pétrochimie, le ciment, les engrais.

Continue reading “Une taxe climat européenne pourrait bénéficier aux pays exportateurs de pétrole”

Development Matters1 Comment
Covid-19, Green transition, Natural Resources, Social Protection

EU climate tax could benefit oil exporters

By Håvard Halland, Senior Economist at the OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

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In energy-intensive sectors, a carbon border tax could shift the geography of investment.

For a green coronavirus recovery, an effective global price on carbon remains as important as ever before. However, until governments can agree on the severity of the risk posed by climate change, a global tax on greenhouse gas emissions seems a remote prospect. Nonetheless, the “carbon border adjustment mechanism” that the EU is considering could have similar effects on capital allocation – albeit on a smaller scale.

The EU’s ambitious new climate goals will require emissions reductions not only in the energy sector, but also in energy-intensive sectors such as heavy industries, metals, petrochemicals, cement, and fertilizer. To ensure a level playing field between EU companies and foreign firms not subject to EU emissions targets, the EU may implement a border tax on carbon-intensive imports. The combination of high carbon taxes within the EU and a carbon border tax would present energy-intensive industries with a new set of locational choices.

Continue reading “EU climate tax could benefit oil exporters”

Development Matters2 Comments
Covid-19, Green transition

The health of the planet and intra-generational equity – lessons learnt from a pandemic

By Milindo Chakrabarti, Professor, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana and Visiting Fellow, RIS, New Delhi, and Jhalak Aggarwal, Post-Graduate Student, Jindal School of Government and Public Policy, O.P. Jindal Global University, Haryana

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

Covid-climate-enviromentAmidst the disorder ushered in by the COVID-19 pandemic, the spread of the virus has curtailed human destruction of the environment. During lockdowns, less cars moved around and less companies dumped their pollutants. At a time when virtually the whole world was under lockdown, “daily global CO2 emissions decreased by 17% by early April 2020 compared with the mean 2019 levels, just under half from changes in surface transport. At their peak, emissions in individual countries decreased by 26% on average” notes a study by the Global Carbon Project published in May. Unfortunately, the trend is reversing with the easing of lockdown measures. The same study predicts that by the end of the year the estimated decline in global carbon emissions will be around 4% if restrictions are lifted, and potentially higher at around 7% if restrictions persist until the end of 2020. Furthermore, to revive and stabilise the economy, attempts are underway to relax environmental regulations and help create new livelihood opportunities to replace those destroyed by the pandemic.

If there is a link between the COVID-19 crisis and emissions declines, reversely, is there a link between the climate crisis and the emergence and spread of the Coronavirus? Continue reading “The health of the planet and intra-generational equity – lessons learnt from a pandemic”

Development Matters
Covid-19, Green transition, Infrastructure, Natural Resources, Policy

How COVID-19 could help eliminate fossil fuel subsidies

Building-better-covid19-banner

By Mario Pezzini, former Director of the OECD Development Centre and special adviser to the OECD Secretary-General on development, and Håvard Halland, Senior Economist at the OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

Oil pumpjacks in Tatarstan, Russia
Photo: Yegor Aleyev/Tass/PA Images

As oil-exporting countries struggle to respond to the crisis, there is a way to make critical fiscal resources available.

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit oil-exporting countries at the worst possible moment. Severely strained health systems, and the need for economic stimulus, call for unprecedented growth in public spending. At the same time, oil export revenues have plummeted, following the demand collapse caused by the pandemic and a breakdown of traditional price-setting mechanisms. As a result, many oil exporters in the low- and middle-income category will struggle to muster anything near the level of expenditure required for an efficient response to the virus. Continue reading “How COVID-19 could help eliminate fossil fuel subsidies”

Lia Beyeler4 Comments
Covid-19, Green transition

A new approach to the intractable problem of climate change

By François Candelon, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG Paris, and the Global Director of the BCG Henderson Institute, Rodolphe Charme di Carlo, Principal at BCG Paris, and Ambassador at the BCG Henderson Institute, and Yves Morieux, Managing Director and Senior Partner at BCG Middle East, BCG Fellow, and head of BCG Institute for Organization

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

“COVID-19 is climate on warp speed” said Gernot Wagner, climate economist at NYU. Both trends show exponential growth – in infected people and CO2 emissions respectively – while capacity to fight them remains limited. Still, while governments enforce emergency measures around the globe, little action on climate has happened to date. Therefore, the actual question to solve is not “what can we do?” but rather “why not now?”

Bringing an alternative and rigorously structured approach can help to find practical, impactful solutions. The concept of Smart Simplicity, applying principles of sociology to solving complex organisational problems in business and beyond, can play this role by analysing inaction from two angles. First, the systemic lens – stemming from Thomas Schelling’s work – assesses how individual behaviours combine to produce collective outcomes that cannot directly be traced back to individual motives. Second, the strategic lens, legacy of Herbert Simon’s “bounded rationality”, analyses individual behaviours within the context of problems they try to solve, with resources to mobilise and constraints to cope with.

Continue reading “A new approach to the intractable problem of climate change”
Development Matters
Green transition

Time for bold initiatives to tackle inequalities and climate change

By Filippos Pierros, Minister-Counsellor, Vice-Chair of the Development Assistance Committee and the Development Centre Governing Board [i]

Green-deal-climate-change

With the resounding failure of the UN COPs to mobilize a strong international response to climate change and inequality, concerned citizens around the world are rightly beginning to show frustration and even anger. And yet, at long last on the final year before the turn of the decade, a major high-income donor of international aid publicly proclaimed it would step up to the plate and propose radical change.

The new EU Commission promised to bring to the floor a “European Green Deal” that will drastically transform the very foundations of the EU economy. The green deal has clear implications for fighting inequalities, as well as for development. The “EU can use its influence, expertise and financial resources to mobilize its neighbors and partners to join it on a sustainable path.” The EU announces a strong “green deal diplomacy” focused on supporting sustainable development globally, engaging countries to end fossil fuel subsidies, phasing out fossil-fuel based infrastructure, investing in climate finance and climate resilience, promoting green regulations, and creating an international carbon market to provide reform incentives. Continue reading “Time for bold initiatives to tackle inequalities and climate change”

Development Matters
Development finance, Green transition, Private Sector, SDGs

Why should investors care about ocean health?

by Dennis Fritsch, PhD, Researcher, Responsible Investor

This blog is part of the
OECD Private Finance for Sustainable Development Conference

Ocean health

“The World’s Oceans Are in Trouble. And So Are Humans, Warns U.N. Report” – a blaring headline in Time Magazine just after the IPCC published their landmark report Oceans and the Cryosphere in September 2019. It highlights what scientists and NGOs have been shouting from the rooftops for years: human activity has put the global ocean in a dire state and by doing so is endangering planetary life as we know it. But how has it come this far? In addition to producing over half of the oxygen we breathe, being the largest carbon sink on the planet and a haven for biodiversity, a healthy ocean is a source of economic livelihoods for billions of people. The value of global ocean assets is estimated at over USD 24 trillion[1] making it the 7th largest economy in the world in GDP terms. Due to its integral role in the global financial and environmental ecosystems, the ocean is high on the international policy agenda[2] and its importance continues to grow. The global ‘Blue Economy’ is expected to expand at twice the rate of the mainstream economy until 2030[3], and already contributes USD 2.5 trillion a year in economic output. Continue reading “Why should investors care about ocean health?”

Lia Beyeler
Green transition

Forging a new way forward for development co-operation in the face of the climate crisis

By Jorge Moreira da Silva, Director, OECD Development Co-operation Directorate

climate-change

Time is running out. The climate crisis is rapidly altering the systems that underpin life on Earth, multiplying existing threats to development while creating new obstacles. It will influence how countries develop for the rest of this century and beyond. As we head into 2020 — when countries will prepare and submit their next round of commitments under the Paris Agreement to commence its implementation — it is timely to check in on progress so far. Specifically, how donor countries and providers of development co-operation are accounting for climate change and aligning their activities with the objectives of the Agreement to ensure they are not supporting unsustainable development.

The climate crisis is affecting communities across the globe, most recently contributing to catastrophic bushfires in multiple states of Australia.  At the same time in the central and southern parts of Mozambique, at least 1.6 million people are in need of assistance due to the devastating effects of the ongoing drought and increasingly severe weather events linked to climate change. These event have been unfolding just months after disastrous fires in the Amazon, underscoring that we are indeed living in a new normal. Amid these events, at the 2019 United Nations (UN) Climate Action Summit in New York this past September, the OECD brought together over 30 climate and development leaders to urgently discuss the imperative to align the development and climate agendas, reflecting on key messages and priorities for the institutions that provide development co-operation. Continue reading “Forging a new way forward for development co-operation in the face of the climate crisis”

Development Matters
Green transition

Can local and sustainable agriculture save biodiversity?

By Marco Maria Cerbo, Chargé d’Affaires a.i. at the Permanent Delegation of Italy to the international organisations in Paris, and Rebecca Graziosi, development co-operation intern

sustainable-agriculture.jpgDuring his speech at the Nobel Banquet, the newly-awarded laureate in Economic Sciences, William D. Nordhaus, declared: “Over the last half-century, the full implications of climate change and its impacts have been illuminated by the intensive research of scientists in different fields. These studies depict an increasingly dire picture of our future under uncontrolled climate change. […] Now, it is up to those who represent us, our elected leaders, to act responsibly to implement durable and effective solutions.”

Data can hardly deny this statement and our planet is now facing an unprecedented emergency. Globally, there is widely-cited evidence that the extinction rate of animal and plant species, as high as 1 000 times the background rate, is increasing rapidly as a result of human activities. In particular, biodiversity in farmland is diminishing, with effects on all of the ecosystem services that are essential to agriculture, including pest control, pollination and climate regulation. Pollution, climate change, over-exploitation of natural resources and changes in land use are the main drivers of biodiversity loss and are clearly related to human activities. Biodiversity is one of the most important legacies we can leave to future generations and its anthropogenic destruction requires urgent action by policy makers and a re-thinking of economic activities. Continue reading “Can local and sustainable agriculture save biodiversity?”

Development Matters