Documents Gambhir, Ajay 3 results

"1. Economic growth will be a high priority for all countries in the months and years following COVID-19. The transition to net zero emissions can significantly contribute to the recovery.
2. There are lessons from recovery packages following the 2008 financial crisis, but the COVID-19 crisis has had a different structural impact on demand and supply (Section 2).
3. In the lead up to COP26, the UK could provide guidance and methodologies to evaluate proposed recovery packages for consistency with Paris and net zero emissions (Section 3).
4. The UK could lead by example with a recovery package including components on net zero buildings, energy storage, clean industry, transport and greenhouse gas removal (Section 4).
5. Institutionally, this could be supported by establishing a Climate Change Emergency Committee and a Net Zero Delivery Body to implement a coherent response (Section 5).
6. Financially, a new National Investment Bank and focus on green financial instruments could significantly scale-up private investment (Section 6).
7. The UK could help other countries develop net zero recovery packages by instigating a new flexible intergovernmental Sustainable Recovery Alliance (Section 7)."

"While the decarbonization of the global economy will bring immense benefits in the aggregate and to many individuals, it will also be disruptive and costly for some, at least in the short term. As these disruptions and costs have become increasingly salient in recent years, there has been an explosion of interest in the climate policy community about how low-carbon transitions can be implemented justly, equitably, and politically smoothly. A key part of what is needed in responding to this growing interest is a better understanding of the suite of ‘transitional assistance policies' and strategies that can be deployed, alongside or as part of climate change mitigation policies and processes. Responding to this need, we survey a wide, multi-disciplinary literature to answer the ‘who', ‘what' and ‘how' of transitional assistance policy: who is likely to be adversely affected by the low-carbon transition, and in what ways? What substantive strategies and policy instruments are available to governments to mitigate the burdens of low-carbon transitions? And how can governments implement such strategies and policies successfully? In the course of answering the first two of these questions, we develop a novel typology of transitional assistance policies, in which multiple policies are parsimoniously classified according to one of four coherent policy strategies, and one of five kinds of beneficiaries. In answering the third question, we emphasize the importance of certain ‘state capacities' for shaping transition processes and managing vested interests.

Key policy insights

Without transitional assistance policies, consumers, workers, businesses, specially-affected communities, and states that are highly dependent on emissions-intensive assets stand to lose from decarbonization.

Transitional assistance policies can be narrow (addressing financial losses only) or broad (addressing a wider range of losses), and conservative (backward-looking) or adaptive (forward-looking).

Combining these elements yields four coherent transitional assistance strategies: compensation; exemption; structural adjustment assistance; and comprehensive adaptive support.

Comprehensive adaptive support strategies have greatest potential for just, equitable and smooth transition outcomes, but are costlier and more complex to implement.

State capacities to steer complex, long-term transitions are therefore a crucial variable in transition success."

"The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement are the two transformative agendas, which set the benchmarks for nations to address urgent social, economic and environmental challenges. Aside from setting long-term goals, the pathways followed by nations will involve a series of synergies and trade-offs both between and within these agendas. Since it will not be possible to optimise across the 17 SDGs while simultaneously transitioning to low-carbon societies, it will be necessary to implement policies to address the most critical aspects of the agendas and understand the implications for the other dimensions. Here, we rely on a modelling exercise to analyse the long-term implications of a variety of Paris-compliant mitigation strategies suggested in the recent scientific literature on multiple dimensions of the SDG Agenda. The strategies included rely on technological solutions such as renewable energy deployment or carbon capture and storage, nature-based solutions such as afforestation and behavioural changes in the demand side. Results for a selection of energy-environment SDGs suggest that some mitigation pathways could have negative implications on food and water prices, forest cover and increase pressure on water resources depending on the strategy followed, while renewable energy shares, household energy costs, ambient air pollution and yield impacts could be improved simultaneously while reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, results indicate that promoting changes in the demand side could be beneficial to limit potential trade-offs."