Policy makers are under increasing pressure to deliver policies that not only foster employment and growth but also are environmentally sustainable. Green growth seeks for even more ambitious results where employment and growth are stimulated by technological and institutional changes arising from better environmental stewardship and adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. As green growth may become the growth paradigm for the 21st century, policy makers require policy tools for addressing this challenge.

A personal carbon allowance (PCA) scheme targets emissions from individual consumption and allocates allowances directly to individuals by dividing the carbon budget on a per capita basis. In this study we analyse the results of a survey sent out to a representative sample of the Swedish population regarding attitudes to a potential PCA scheme.

This article seeks to shed light on policy processes arising from interaction between indigenous rainmakers and meteorologists, in participatory action research aimed at increasing the capacity of a local community to adapt to climate change.

Unique survey data from a contingent valuation study conducted in three different countries (China, Sweden, and the United States) were used to investigate the ordinary citizen’s willingness to pay (WTP) for reducing CO2 emissions. We found that a large majority of the respondents in all three countries believe that the mean global temperature has increased over the last 100 years and that humans are responsible for the increase.

This paper uses a choice experiment to study citizens' preferences for effort-sharing rules for reducing carbon dioxide emissions. For a given global cost and level of emission reduction, we study the willingness to pay for various rules that imply different distributions of the cost between EU, the US, China and Africa.

Hopes for a climate deal were mercilessly shattered at Copenhagen and each of the successive COPs since then. One result is that “green growth” is promoted almost as if it were an alternative path. Obviously, green growth is in fact the goal, but the phrase is not a magic wand. The world economy will require tough policy instruments to become green — and it is naïve to think otherwise.

We examine the driving forces behind farm households’ decisions to adapt to climate change, and the impact of adaptation on farm households’ food productivity.

Effects of land use changes are starting to be included in estimates of life-cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, so-called carbon footprints (CFs), from food production. Their omission can lead to serious underestimates, particularly for meat. Here we estimate emissions from the conversion of forest to pasture in the Legal Amazon Region (LAR) of Brazil and present a model to distribute the emissions from deforestation over products and time subsequent to the land use change.

As the biggest carbon emitter in the world, China is facing tremendous pressure domestically and internationally. To promote the international efforts to tackle climate change, the Chinese government announced its 2020 carbon intensity target and is actively taking part in the international climate negotiations.

While Africa has contributed marginally to climate change, the continent will be disproportionately affected by it, particularly the agricultural sector. Climate change demands policy action to address mitigation and adaptation needs, and it poses opportunities in implementation of international instruments.