Person: Ruta, Giovanni
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Environmental economics, green growth, natural capital accounting, China, Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and Pacific, Sub-Saharan Africa
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Last updated: February 21, 2024
Biography
Giovanni Ruta is Lead Environmental Economist in the Environment, Natural Resources and Blue Economy Global Practice at the World Bank, East Asia and Pacific region where he coordinates the operational and analytical agenda on green growth, climate change, biodiversity and natural resources management. Gianni joined the World Bank in 2001 and has worked on the economics of sustainability, green growth, natural capital accounting. He has experience in East Asia and the Pacific, Latin America and in Africa. Gianni holds a PhD in Environmental and Natural Resource Economics from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Master in Environmental Economics from University College London.
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Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
Publication Nature's Frontiers: Achieving Sustainability, Efficiency, and Prosperity with Natural Capital(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023-06-27) Damania, Richard; Polasky, Stephen; Ruckelshaus, Mary; Russ, Jason; Amann, Markus; Chaplin-Kramer, Rebecca; Gerber, James; Hawthorne, Peter; Heger, Martin Philipp; Mamun, Saleh; Ruta, Giovanni; Schmitt, Rafael; Smith, Jeffrey; Vogl, Adrian; Wagner, Fabian; Zaveri, EshaThe great expansion of economic activity since the end of World War II has caused an unprecedented rise in living standards, but it has also caused rapid changes in earth systems. Nearly all types of natural capital—the world’s stock of resources and services provided by nature—are in decline. Clean air, abundant and clean water, fertile soils, productive fisheries, dense forests, and healthy oceans are critical for healthy lives and healthy economies. Mounting pressures, however, suggest that the trend of declining natural capital may cast a long shadow into the future. "Nature’s Frontiers: Achieving Sustainability, Efficiency, and Prosperity with Natural Capital" presents a novel approach to address these foundational challenges of sustainability. A methodology combining innovative science, new data sources, and cutting-edge biophysical and economic models builds sustainable resource efficiency frontiers to assess how countries can sustainably use their natural capital more efficiently. The analysis provides recommendations on how countries can better use their natural capital to achieve their economic and environ mental goals. The report indicates that significant efficiency gaps exist in nearly every country. Closing these gaps can address many of the world’s pressing economic and environmental problems—economic productivity, health, food and water security, and climate change. Although the approach outlined in this report will entail demanding policy reforms, the costs of inaction will be far higher.Publication The Economic Case for Nature: A Global Earth-Economy Model to Assess Development Policy Pathways(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2021-06-29) Johnson, Justin Andrew; Baldos, Uris; Cervigni, Raffaello; Chonabayashi, Shun; Corong, Erwin; Gavryliuk, Olga; Hertel, Thomas; Nootenboom, Christopher; Gerber, James; Ruta, Giovanni; Polasky, StephenThe Economic Case for Nature is part of a series of papers by the World Bank that lays out the economic rationale for investing in nature and recognizes how economies rely on nature for services that are largely underpriced. This report presents a first-of-its-kind global integrated ecosystem-economy modelling exercise to assess economic policy responses to the global biodiversity crisis. Modeling the interaction between nature’s services and the global economy to 2030, the report points to a range and combination of policy scenarios available to reduce the impact of nature’s loss on economies. This modeling framework represents an important steppingstone towards ‘nature-smart’ decision-making, as it seeks to support policymakers who face complex tradeoffs involving the management of natural capital, and hence achieving growth that is resilient and inclusive.Publication Trade in 'Virtual Carbon' : Empirical Results and Implications for Policy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-01) Atkinson, Giles; Hamilton, Kirk; Van Der Mensbrugghe, Dominique; Ruta, GiovanniThe fact that developing countries do not have carbon emission caps under the Kyoto Protocol has led to the current interest in high-income countries in border taxes on the "virtual" carbon content of imports. The authors use Global Trade Analysis Project data and input-output analysis to estimate the flows of virtual carbon implicit in domestic production technologies and the pattern of international trade. The results present striking evidence on the wide variation in the carbon-intensiveness of trade across countries, with major developing countries being large net exporters of virtual carbon. The analysis suggests that tax rates of $50 per ton of virtual carbon could lead to very substantial effective tariff rates on the exports of the most carbon-intensive developing nations.Publication Implementation of Environmental Policies: 2010 Environment Strategy(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2011-03) Triana, Ernesto Sanchez; Ortolano, Leonard; Dezfuli, Ghazal; Kanakia, Rahul; Ruta, GiovanniThe Bank's environmental agenda has evolved gradually since the 1970s. During the 1970s and 1980s, the main focus was on mitigating the potential environmental damage associated with investment projects using environmental impact assessments (EIA). This approach was formalized in the Bank's environmental assessment (EA) requirements, which today consist of a set of individual environmental policies and procedures. Recent evaluations of the Bank's safeguards policy implementation reveal that shortages in environmental safeguards specialists and inadequate skills mix, among other factors, are affecting the quality of safeguards implementation. This report recommends strengthening the environmental safeguards career track to help elevate the profile of safeguards specialists and provide opportunities for career advancement in the course of doing safeguards work. The report also recommends that there be an organizational restructuring to enhance the Bank's capabilities for conducting effective safeguards work. Furthermore, the report recommends developing a comprehensive training program that will enhance the safeguards skill mix and increase the effectiveness of safeguards support at the Bank. This report also recommends adopting a categorization methodology that reduces reliance on procedures requiring subjective judgments. Next, the report recommends the creation of a systematic program for measuring, reporting, and evaluating the effects of safeguards implementation. It also recommends a move towards substantive compliance and environmental sustainability principles for the safeguards framework. This report also recommends disseminating knowledge of policy instruments, besides environment impact assessments, that are able to produce similar or better outcomes than the Bank's safeguard policy requirements. The design and implementation of instruments for environmental policy can be pursued with a more risk-based and differentiated approach, based on country or borrower capacity. In addition to the mitigation of negative impacts, this report recommends institutionalizing the enhancement of positive impacts and client capacity building measures into the safeguards framework.Publication Capital Accumulation and Resource Depletion : A Hartwick Rule Counterfactual(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2005-01) Hamilton, Kirk; Tajibaeva, Liaila; Ruta, GiovanniHow rich would resource-abundant countries be if they had actually followed the Hartwick Rule (invest resource rents in other assets) over the past 30 years? The authors use time series data on investments and rents on exhaustible resource extraction for 70 countries to answer this question. The results are striking: Gabon, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela would all be as wealthy as the Republic of Korea, while Nigeria would be five times as well off as it is currently. The authors also derive a more general rule for sustainability-maintain positive constant genuine investment-and use this to draw further empirical results.Publication Wealth Accounting, Exhaustible Resources and Social Welfare(2009) Hamilton, Kirk; Ruta, GiovanniThe empirical literature on natural resource accounting uses methods which implicitly or explicitly entail measuring changes in total resource asset value when an exhaustible resource is depleted. In contrast, the growth theoretic literature on saving, social welfare and sustainable development is built upon a central finding, that the change in real wealth (as measured by net or 'genuine' saving) is proportional to the change in social welfare. We show that the change in total wealth exceeds the change in real wealth in optimal and non-optimal models of resource-extracting economies. This suggests that the change in social welfare is over-estimated when the change in total resource asset value is used as the measure of depletion. A simple empirical exercise, using World Bank data on 'adjusted net saving', reinforces the results from theory.