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Knudsen, Camilla

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Last updated: February 21, 2024
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Camilla Knudsen is an economist at the World Bank, where she works to integrate climate change and development considerations. Most recently, her work focuses on the distributional impacts of climate policies in terms of employment outcomes for workers. Before joining the World Bank in 2021, she completed a PhD in environmental economics at the University of Manchester, United Kingdom. Her research focused on nonmarket valuation and ecosystem services.

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    Within Reach: Navigating the Political Economy of Decarbonization
    (Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-11-16) Hallegatte, Stéphane; Godinho, Catrina; Rentschler, Jun; Avner, Paolo; Dorband, Ira Irina; Knudsen, Camilla; Lemke, Jana; Mealy, Penny
    Despite global commitments made through the Paris Agreement in 2015 to combat climate change, their translation into national policies has been slow, raising concerns about the feasibility of achieving climate targets. While policies face many obstacles, the political economy is one of the primary impediments to climate action, and urgency to reduce emissions makes slow and gradual approach increasingly insufficient. The report attempts to identify key political economy barriers and explore options to address them through the 4i Framework, considering how institutions, interests, ideas, and influence affect the political economy. The report offers a practical guide to help countries address political economy barriers when implementing climate policies with three prongs: (1) Climate Governance: governments can adapt their institutional framework, in ways that fit with the pre-existing political economy and moving from opportunistic and unstable to strategic and stable climate institutions. Establishing strategic climate governance institutions – such as climate change framework laws, long-term strategies, or just transition frameworks - can alter the political economy, set clear objectives, improve coordination across actors, and improve the ability to monitor progress and hold decisionmakers accountable. (2) Policy Sequencing: policies can be prioritized and sequenced based on dynamic efficiency, considering not only the economic costs and benefits, but also their feasibility and long-term impact on the political economy. The Climate Policy Feasibility Frontier tool can help identify policies that can overcome short-term political economy obstacles, and at the same time improve capacities and change the political economy to facilitate further climate action. (3) Policy Design and Engagement, considers the effective implementation of climate reforms by tactically navigating political economy constraints. This involves engaging citizens to create process legitimacy and reducing and managing distributional effects, not only across but also within income groups.
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    The Macroeconomic Implications of a Transition to Zero Net Emissions: A Modeling Framework
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03) Hallegatte, Stephane; McIsaac, Florent; Dudu, Hasan; Jooste, Charl; Beck, Hans; Knudsen, Camilla
    Analyzing the macroeconomic consequences of a transition to a net-zero economy creates specific modeling challenges, including those related to the non-marginal nature of the required transformation, the role of technologies, and the replacement of fossil fuel-based assets with greener ones. To address these challenges, this paper proposes a hybrid modeling approach that starts from a set of sectoral techno-economic scenarios to construct an illustrative resilient and net-zero decarbonization trajectory. It then assesses the macroeconomic implications by linking sectoral dynamics to two macroeconomic frameworks: a multisector general equilibrium framework and an aggregate macrostructural model. This approach combines the advantages of multiple tools and captures the various dimensions of the transition, including the need to tackle simultaneously multiple market failures beyond the carbon externality. The paper illustrates this methodology with Türkiye’s objective to reach net zero emissions by 2053. The multisector general equilibrium framework suggests that the transition could contribute positively to Türkiye’s economic growth despite the large investment needs, especially when indirect mitigation benefits are taken into account and if labor market frictions can be reduced. Improved energy efficiency in the transportation and building sectors drives the growth benefits in the short and medium terms. The growth benefits depend on how transition investments are financed: if they crowd out other productive investments, the benefits are significantly reduced and can even become slightly negative in the long term. The macrostructural model focuses on implications for public debt and the current account, using two extreme scenarios in which additional investments are triggered by higher productivity or a set of budget-neutral incentives (taxes and subsidies). The model concludes that the transition would have moderate impacts on the current account and public debt. With budget-neutral incentives, there is a small increase in gross domestic product (GDP) growth, the debt-to-GDP ratio increases by 1 to 3 percent, and the current account remains unchanged thanks to the reduction in fuel imports.
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    Integrating Climate Change and Natural Disasters in the Economic Analysis of Projects: A Disaster and Climate Risk Stress Test Methodology
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06) Anjum, Rubaina; Hallegatte, Stephane; Shariq, Ammara; Winglee, Michelle; Avner, Paolo; Knudsen, Camilla
    To maximize development gains, World Bank projects must consider climate change and disaster risks in their design and appraisal. Buildings could be exposed to heat waves, roads might be vulnerable to floods, and agricultural practices may be subject to drought and pests. Although projects can be simultaneously vulnerable to several such risks, in most cases, it is possible to design and implement projects that are resilient to future climate change and natural risks. Doing so, however, requires these risks to be considered at each step of the project cycle. To select the best projects and ensure they deliver as expected, it is important to ensure that all project appraisal and assessment processes including economic analyses properly consider all risks. This guidance note proposes a simple methodology for doing this by adding a stress test for climate change and natural disasters to the economic analysis of a project.
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    Carbon Pricing and Transit Accessibility to Jobs: Impacts on Inequality in Rio de Janeiro and Kinshasa
    (World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-03) Nell, Andrew; Herszenhut, Daniel; Nakamura, Shohei; Saraiva, Marcus; Avner, Paolo; Knudsen, Camilla
    Urban transport is a major driver of global carbon dioxide emissions. Without strong mitigation policies, rapid urbanization, especially in developing countries, is expected to exacerbate the problem. There is a growing consensus on the fundamental role of carbon pricing for achieving reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. However, carbon pricing policies are frequently criticized and resisted for having adverse distributional impacts, which could hinder their implementation, particularly when implemented as a fuel levy—which would impact private vehicle usage but may also affect transit services such as buses. Currently, there is a lack of evidence that quantifies these negative impacts, especially on people’s ability to reach economic opportunities and services. To this end, this paper studies the impact of a uniform carbon price, as one of the most commonly discussed climate policies, on access to employment opportunities via transit services in Kinshasa and Rio de Janeiro. Reduced access to jobs would contribute to fragmented urban labor markets and thus lead to negative social outcomes. Unlike most previous studies, this study defines access as being constrained by both travel time and travel budget. The results indicate that fuel price increases (simulating increases induced by a carbon tax) reduce accessibility, but the effect is lower in more compact and walkable cities as well as in cities that have green transit options. The paper also shows that fuel price increases have spatially and socially disparate outcomes, with the lowest income communities not necessarily being the most affected, in part because even in the absence of carbon pricing, they are found to be priced out of using transit services. The results demonstrate the importance of strategies and investments, such as land use planning and decarbonized transit services, but also possibly complementary social protection programs (such as targeted subsidies, or even cash transfers), to mitigate the negative distributional consequences of carbon pricing policies.