Protecting forests, biodiversity, and the climate: predicting policy impact to improve policy choice

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We argue for integrating the consideration of location in policy planning in three ways, in order to help to predict policy impacts on deforestation and, thereby, improve policy choices.

Climate Change, Conservation, Policy Design

Lessons learned from investing in marine and coastal management initiatives in the East Asian Seas

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EfD Authors:

The concept that underlies the interventions of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) International Waters Program is adaptive management at the Large Marine Ecosystem (LME) scale across the sequence of interventions from assessment and analysis to development of regional strategic action programs and national implementation of action plans to address transboundary environmental concerns. The GEF has provided grants to recipient countries in the East Asian Seas region covering five LMEs since the early 1990s and amounting to about US$200 million.

Fisheries, Policy Design

Measuring risk aversion among the urban poor in Kolkata, India

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We examine risk preferences in an urban setting in a low-income developing country with nonstudent subjects by adapting the experimental approach of Holt and Laury (HL; 2002). We conducted 22 group experiments with 404 participants and used in-kind payoffs. The average respondent was ‘riskaverse’ (the midpoint of Constant Relative Risk Aversion (CRRA) intervals among participants was 0.53, roughly in line with most similar studies in poor countries).

Policy Design

Synergies and Trade-offs between Climate and Local Air Pollution: Policies in Sweden

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In this paper, we explore the synergies and tradeoffs between abatement of global and local pollution. We built a unique dataset of Swedish heat and power plants with detailed boiler-level data 2001-2009 on not only production and inputs but also emissions of CO2 and NOx.

Climate Change, Policy Design

Agricultural-risk management through community-based wildlife conservation in Zimbabwe

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether community-based wildlife conservation can potentially be added in rural farmers’ investment portfolio to diversify and consequently reduce agricultural risk.

Design/methodology/approach – The correlation coefficient is computed from national data on the rates of return on agricultural production and wildlife conservation, to find out whether wildlife conservation is a feasible hedge asset.

Agriculture, Conservation, Policy Design

Policy Instruments for Sustainable Development at Rio +20

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Twenty years ago, governments gathered for the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro. The “Rio Declaration” laid out several principles of sustainable development, including the central role of policy instruments. In this article, we take stock of where we stand today in implementing sound and effective environmental policy instruments throughout the world, particularly in developing and transitional economies.

Climate Change, Policy Design

Behavioral Economics and Environmental Policy

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This article provides an interpretive survey on implications of insights from behavioral economics for environmental policy. In particular, it discusses whether, and if so how, policy implications based on conventional economic theory have to be modified when insights from behavioral economics are considered.

Experiments

Setting Priorities, Targeting Subsidies among Water, Sanitation, and Preventive Health Interventions in Developing Countries

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EfD Authors:

This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that water and sanitation improvements and other preventive health interventions are always a wise economic investment. Costs and benefits are presented for six water, sanitation, and health programs—handwashing, sanitation, point-of-use filtration and chlorination, insecticide-treated bed nets, and cholera vaccination. Model parameters are specified for a range of conditions that are plausible for locations in developing countries.

Policy Design

Climate Policy, Uncertainty, and the Role of Technological Innovation

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We study how uncertainty about climate change severity affects the relative benefits of early abatement and a portfolio of research and development (R&D) in lowering future abatement costs. Optimal early abatement depends on the curvature of the marginal benefit and marginal abatement cost (MAC) functions and how the uncertain parameter affects marginal benefits.

Climate Change, Policy Design

How Should Support for Climate-Friendly Technologies Be Designed?

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Stabilizing global greenhouse gas concentrations at levels to avoid significant climate risks will require massive ‘‘decarbonization’’ of all the major economies over the next few decades, in addition to the reduced emissions from other GHGs and carbon sequestration. Achieving the necessary scale of emissions reductions will require a multifaceted policy effort to support a broad array of technological and behavioral changes. Change on this scale will require sound, well-thought-out strategies.

Climate Change, Policy Design