Publication: Country Stakes in Climate Change Negotiations : Two Dimensions of Vulnerability
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Date
2009
ISSN
14693062
Published
2009
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Abstract
Future global agreements on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are likely to include developing countries and industrialized countries that are not part of the Kyoto Protocol. An assessment using a comprehensive geo-referenced database of indicators relating to global change and energy provides insight into countries' likely attitudes and positions with respect to international treaties regulating carbon emissions. A distinction is made between source vulnerabilities (access to fossil fuels and renewable energy sources, options for GHG sequestration, the potential size of employment and income shocks) and impact vulnerabilities (changes in agricultural productivity, weather events and sea-level rise). This differential vulnerability is used to identify clear differences that determine likely negotiating positions. This helps us to understand the incentives required to make the establishment of such agreements more likely. Countries with high impact vulnerability and low source vulnerability should be the most inclined to support greenhouse gas emissions limits. Conversely, countries with high source vulnerability and low impact vulnerability should be most resistant to such limits. Additionally, a successful transition to clean energy sources will require transition support for countries with high source vulnerability and adaptation support for countries with high impact vulnerability.
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Publication Country Stakes in Climate Change Negotiations : Two Dimensions of Vulnerability(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2007-08)Using a comprehensive geo-referenced database of indicators relating to global change and energy, the paper assesses countries' likely attitudes with respect to international treaties that regulate carbon emissions. The authors distinguish between source and impact vulnerability and classify countries according to these dimensions. The findings show clear differences in the factors that determine likely negotiating positions. This analysis and the resulting detailed, country level information help to explain the incentives required to make the establishment of such agreements more likely.Publication The Economics of Renewable Energy Expansion in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2010-01)Accelerating development in Sub-Saharan Africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity -- currently reaching only about one-third of households. This paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check. The authors develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand-alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply. The results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access. But it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in Africa, even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered. Decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas, while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside. These findings underscore the need to de-carbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in Africa.Publication Greenhouse Emissions and Climate Change(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2009)There is no longer any serious debate about whether greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are altering the earth's climate. There is also a broad consensus that efficient mitigation of emissions will require carbon pricing via market based instruments (charges or auctioned tradable permits). The remaining controversies stem mostly from economic and technological forecasting uncertainties, disputes about global and intergenerational equity, and political divisions over collective measures to combat climate change. Near term closure seems unlikely on any of these fronts, but the science is now sufficiently compelling that a global consensus supports concerted action. Developing countries must be full participants, because they will be most heavily impacted by global warming, and because the scale of their emissions is rapidly approaching parity with developed countries.Publication Social Dimensions of Climate Change : Equity and Vulnerability in a Warming World(World Bank, 2010)Climate change is widely acknowledged as foremost among the formidable challenges facing the international community in the 21st century. It poses challenges to fundamental elements of our understanding of appropriate goals for social and economic policy, such as the connection of prosperity, growth, equity, and sustainable development. This volume seeks to establish an agenda for research and action built on an enhanced understanding of the relationship between climate change and the key social dimensions of vulnerability, social justice, and equity. The volume is organized as follows. This introductory chapter first sets the scene by framing climate change as an issue of social justice at multiple levels, and by highlighting equity and vulnerability as the central organizing themes of an agenda on the social dimensions of climate change. Chapter two leads off with a review of existing theories and frameworks for understanding vulnerability, drawing out implications for pro-poor climate policy. Understanding the multilayered causal structure of vulnerability then can assist in identifying entry points for pro-poor climate policy at multiple levels. Building on such analytical approaches, chapters three and four, respectively, consider the implications of climate change for armed conflict and for migration. Those chapters are followed by a discussion of two of the most important social cleavages that characterize distinct forms of vulnerability to climate change and climate action: gender (chapter five) and ethnicity or indigenous identity (chapter six), in the latter case, focusing on the role of indigenous knowledge in crafting climate response measures in the Latin American and Caribbean region. Chapter seven highlights the important mediating role of local institutions in achieving more equitable, pro-poor outcomes from efforts to support adaptation to climate change. Chapter eight examines the implications of climate change for agrarian societies living in dry-land areas of the developing world, and chapter nine does the same for those living in urban centers. Chapter ten considers the role of social policy instruments in supporting pro-poor adaptation to climate change; and it argues for a focus on 'no-regrets' options that integrate adaptation with existing development approaches, albeit with modifications to take better account of the ways in which climate variables interact with other drivers of vulnerability. Finally, chapter eleven turns to the implications of climate policy and action for forest areas and forest people.Publication The Economics of Renewable Energy Expansion in Rural Sub-Saharan Africa(2011)Accelerating development in Sub-Saharan Africa will require massive expansion of access to electricity--currently reaching only about one third of households. This paper explores how essential economic development might be reconciled with the need to keep carbon emissions in check. We develop a geographically explicit framework and use spatial modeling and cost estimates from recent engineering studies to determine where stand-alone renewable energy generation is a cost effective alternative to centralized grid supply. Our results suggest that decentralized renewable energy will likely play an important role in expanding rural energy access. However, it will be the lowest cost option for a minority of households in Africa, even when likely cost reductions over the next 20 years are considered. Decentralized renewables are competitive mostly in remote and rural areas, while grid connected supply dominates denser areas where the majority of households reside. These findings underscore the need to decarbonize the fuel mix for centralized power generation as it expands in Africa.
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