The United States must work to establish an ambitious new international climate finance goal this year at COP29 as part of a five-year plan to scale resources to combat the climate crisis.
Topic:
Climate Change, Diplomacy, Climate Finance, and Conference of the Parties (COP)
Anne Christianson, Trevor Sutton, and Frances Colon
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
As President Joe Biden’s first term draws to a close, his administration must deliver on three international climate policies to catalyze a 21st-century clean energy economy and avoid the worst impacts of climate change.
Topic:
Climate Change, Diplomacy, Economy, Inflation, Renewable Energy, Resilience, and Joe Biden
Jill Rosenthal, Rosa Barrientos-Ferrer, and Kate Petosa
Publication Date:
06-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
Federal and state governments should step up efforts—including adopting heat standards—to address increased on-the-job heat-related injury, illness, and death.
Topic:
Climate Change, Health, Labor Issues, Regulation, and Heat Waves
Allie Schneider, Paige Shoemaker DeMio, and Hailey Gibbs
Publication Date:
07-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
Center for American Progress - CAP
Abstract:
As climate change intensifies extreme heat around the globe, policymakers must take steps to develop heat standards for children and support infrastructure improvements to ensure schools, child care centers, and communities are safe and healthy places for children.
Topic:
Climate Change, Education, Children, Child Development, and Heat
This paper investigates the elusive role of productivity heterogeneity in new trade models in the trade and environment nexus. We contrast the Eaton-Kortum and the Melitz models with firm heterogeneity to the Armington and Krugman models without heterogeneity. We show that if firms have a constant emission share in terms of sales — as they do in a wide range of trade and environment models — the three models’ emission predictions exactly coincide. Conversely, if firms have a constant emission intensity per quantity — a prominent alternative in the literature — the emission equivalence between the three models breaks. We provide a generalization that nests both constant emission shares in sales and constant quantity emission intensities as special cases. We calibrate the models to global production and trade data and use German firm-level data to estimate the key elasticity of how emission intensity changes with productivity. Our multi-industry quantification demonstrates that the role of firm heterogeneity depends both on the model and the estimated parameters. Moving from the Armington model to the EK model increases the emissions effect on trade, while moving from the Krugman model to the Melitz model decreases the emission effects on trade.
Topic:
Climate Change, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, Carbon Emissions, and Sustainable Development
Wilfried Rickels, Mathias Fridahl, Roland Rothenstein, and Felix Schenuit
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW)
Abstract:
• A carbon central bank (CCB) that translates carbon removals into allowances would transform the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) from a fiat allowance to a gold standard system, ensuring unchanged net emissions on the path to net-zero greenhouse gas (GHG) targets.
• Meeting such expectations would require a CCB with a clear commitment to a net-zero GHG target, but also with the capacity to manage the market on the path to that target.
• This requires a strong institutional framework, which could be achieved by integrating the CCB into the European Central Bank (ECB), building on its reputation and capacity.
• Given the long lead time to set up such an institution, the European Commission should already take the first steps to fulfil the other requirement, namely building up a large carbon removal certificate (CRC) reserve, which would provide the CCB with the credibility to stabilize the market in the future.
• To fill the CRC reserve, the EU should emulate the US approach by immediately initiating resultbased carbon removal procurement as a first key step of a sequential approach to integrated carbon removal into climate policy.
• This could be achieved by developing a centralized procurement program, supporting existing procurement programs, such as Sweden’s or Denmark’s, and incentivizing additional EU member states to initiate procurement.
• An important prerequisite for this is the ability to bank CRCs that are not yet eligible for compliance with near-term EU climate targets and use them in later crediting periods.
Topic:
Climate Change, European Union, Carbon Emissions, Net Zero, and Carbon Central Bank
Arthur Brochen, Mohamud Mohamed Khadar, Abdirashid Artan, Delphine Virnot, and Albert Martinez
Publication Date:
09-2024
Content Type:
Special Report
Institution:
European Institute of Peace (EIP)
Abstract:
This analysis assesses both the short and long-term impacts of environment- and climate-related security risks in the Newly Liberated Areas (NLA) of Somalia in Hirshabelle and Galmudug. The analysis had the objectives of (1) understanding the pathways in which environmental and climate risks can affect conflict better and (2) developing actionable recommendations for environmental peacemaking and peacebuilding in these states of Somalia.
This integrated climate and conflict analysis employed a methodology based on the conflict analysis guidance from the European External Action Service (EEAS) and the climate security guidance developed by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Environment, Conflict, and Peacemaking
The drought in the Horn of Africa in 2020–2023 and the floods in Libya in September 2023 are recent examples of climate change-induced disasters that were exacerbated by a lack of adaptive capacity.
In the Horn of Africa, up to 2.7 million people were displaced by extreme weather events, and the catastrophic floods in Derna, Libya, killed approximately 11,000 people.
In addition to the direct impacts, there is a need to understand the cascading impacts of climate change, which are likely to increasingly affect societal security. At present, the risks are growing faster than societal preparedness.
The EU should raise political awareness of climate disasters and their cascading impacts. The ground needs to be prepared for decisive and ambitious climate change mitigation, and developed countries should offer continuous support for adaptation and capacity building.
Topic:
Security, Climate Change, Natural Disasters, European Union, and Climate Governance