Climate Change

Healthy ecosystems like forests, wetlands, and farms are nature's water infrastructure. They are essential for buffering against floods and the provision of clean, ample water around the world – feeding growth in agriculture, industry, and cities. But unlike traditional pipes and pumps, “natural” infrastructure projects are rarely able to take advantage of bond financing by cities, companies and utilities.

The Transport Emissions & Social Cost Assessment is a project under the World Resources Institute’s Sustainable and Livable Cities Program, funded by the Caterpillar Foundation. The project aims to develop a methodology guide, with a simple MS Excel– based tool, to estimate transport emissions inventories and evaluate the associated social impact costs.

Early and ambitious action to reduce short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs) is essential to achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals. SLCPs include methane, hydrofluorocarbons, black carbon, and tropospheric ozone. Actions to reduce these highly potent pollutants help avoid crossing important thresholds, such as a 1.5°C temperature rise above pre-industrial levels, and potential climatic tipping points, which will affect poor and vulnerable communities first and worst.

Over the past decade and especially in the past five years, industrialized governments and development finance institutions have launched a multitude of dedicated climate change funds and initiatives intended to mobilize private sector investment in mitigation and adaptation projects in developing countries. This paper examines this increasingly used model to channel climate finance, hereafter referred to as public and public–private climate funds and initiatives (PPCFIs).

Download the paper here.

Millions of residents in some of the fastest growing cities in the world don’t have access to clean, reliable energy, and the challenge of reaching them is not getting easier. In 2012, only 58 percent of the urban population had access to electricity in low-income countries, and nearly 500 million urban residents worldwide used dirty and harmful cooking fuels like charcoal and wood.

The working paper will be part of the “Low Emission Zone/Congestion Charge (LEZ/CC) Public Communication Strategies” series of papers to offer a comprehensive package of public communication strategies to safeguard successful implementation. It is the first paper in the series, and studies 10 cases from Europe, Asia, and the United States to highlight the variety of social, political, and environmental contexts within which CC and LEZ schemes were planned and implemented.

The climate finance architecture—the system of specialized, public funds that help countries implement climate mitigation and adaptation projects and programs—is crucial if the world is to meet the climate change challenge. Over the past 25 years, many national, regional and international climate funds have been created. Each new fund responded to needs and gaps that existed at the time, but this has led to a rather complex system.

As extreme weather events become more frequent and stronger, it is critical that policymakers and development practitioners incorporate climate change adaptation objectives into their sectoral policies and plans. This process, called mainstreaming, has the potential to improve the resilience of development outcomes, contribute to the more efficient use of resources, and avoid investments that unintentionally lead to maladaptation.

The annual economic benefits of restoring degraded and deforested land globally are an estimated $84 billion. As the economy surrounding landscape restoration – the New Restoration Economy – continues to develop, prospective investors are intrigued by the financial returns restoration projects can deliver.

See the full infographic here.