Forests and transparency under the Paris Agreement
CERTIFIED COURSE
Topic outline
The objective of this course is to learn about the Enhanced Transparency Framework (EFT) under the Paris Agreement. It will be useful to those wishing to understand the importance of forest-related data collection, analysis and dissemination in meeting the Enhanced Transparency Framework requirements.
System RequirementsThe online version of this course runs on the latest versions of Chrome and Safari. In order to access this course on Internet Explorer or Firefox, you must install and enable Adobe Flash player.The downloadable version only runs on Windows PC’s and no additional software is needed.
AudienceIndividuals who would especially benefit from taking this course include:
Heads of national forest authorities or ministry
Climate or forest officers
Students in forestry and environmental sciences
You will learn about
The importance of forests in achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement
The progressive changes in moving towards the transparency framework under the Paris Agreement, illustrating how this could be addressed in the forest sector
The principles and elements which guide the design and operation of a sustainable National Forest Monitoring System
The importance of the National Forest Monitoring System to meet the requirement of the Modalities, Procedures and Guidelines of the ETF
Course structureThe course consists of 3 lessons, of 30 minutes duration each: Lesson 1 – The Enhanced Transparency Framework and Forests Lesson 2 – The National Forest Monitoring System Lesson 3 – Forest data for the Enhanced Transparency Framework under the Paris Agreement
Partners
Digital Badge CertificationTo be granted a digital certification from the FAO e-learning Centre, you will have to take the final evaluation exam after you’ve finished a course. Our digital badge certifications verify that you have achieved the learning outcomes and competencies outlined in FAO e-learning courses. What is a digital badge? Digital badges are online visual representations of learned skills and achievements earned in learning environments. They have already been adopted widely across a range of sectors and are being used to recognize both accredited and non-accredited learning in formal, informal and non-formal settings. Badges can be displayed wherever earners want them on the web, and share them for employment, education or lifelong learning.
By Cornis van der Lugt (USB) and Peter Paul van de Wijs (GRI)
The 2020 stock take of ESG reporting provisions in countries and markets around the world
Environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure has never been more pervasive around the world — and it is now firmly in the mainstream of policies requiring reporting on organizational performance. This was a key conclusion of the fifth edition of Carrots & Sticks, the flagship publication and online resource assessing the regulatory landscape for non-financial reporting.
An initiative of Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) and the University of Stellenbosch Business School (USB), Carrots & Sticks (C&S) offers a comprehensive overview of the latest trends in reporting provisions world-wide, covering more than 600 requirements and resources. The 2020 edition, published in July, provides a substantial increase in scope on the 2016 report, covering more than 80 countries — including the world’s 60 largest economies.
As the annual UN General Assembly gets underway, it’s timely to explore five highlights from C&S 2020. These insights are important as we address the role of policies on ESG disclosure, corporate reporting and transparency, in the context of progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
1.The SDGs and consequences of COVID-19
As a global shortlist of the crucial material topics for our planet, the SDGs have become a reference point for non-financial and sustainability reporting policy. While explicit reference to the SDGs in disclosure requirements targeting companies remain limited, they are often implied through the themes addressed. Links to responsible business, employment and accountable institutions (SDGs 12, 16 and 8) are widespread. However, references to public health and education (SDGs 3 and 4) are low, something we can expect to change following the pandemic.
As COVID-19 focuses the attention of policymakers on better ways to achieve healthy societies and climate-resilient economies, the importance of measuring the impacts of companies and encouraging sustainable practices increases. Looking ahead, the systemic implications of public health and infrastructure weaknesses is likely to receive more attention. Health and education will likely require more sector-specific guidance, while being mindful of the ripple effect of the pandemic across sectors.
What does this mean for the health and education reporting related response in the longer term? Addressing gaps and improving coordination will be needed. As a recent GRI webinar series uncovered, organizations and their stakeholders are already focusing on the changes in reporting practices in a post COVID-19 world.
2.The materiality process
The regulatory landscape both reflects and drives perceptions of key material themes. Related is the question of target audience. The landscape continues to display confusion about what information is relevant for which audience — and where best to disclose. Greater clarity may, among others, be enhanced by formalizing the processes through which companies determine topics most material and relevant to them.
The expansion in the disclosure themes companies are expected to report on is converging around the 34 topics addressed by the GRI Standards. Yet unexpected developments, such as COVID-19, always raise interest in new topics and display event-driven materiality. Similarly, changing societal expectations influence what topics are material. As materiality assessments are temporal and may change quickly, determining a set of core metrics today might not represent the appropriate disclosures of tomorrow.
Rather than a ‘tick-box’ exercise, companies must identify relevant disclosures through regular and robust, multi-stakeholder assessments. By applying a single core set of ESG metrics — which is universally applicable to all organizations regardless of their size, location or sector — companies might lose the nuances that inform the reporting process and subsequent business decisions. It can also camouflage the most significant impacts, positive or negative, on sustainable development.
3.The role of financial regulators
Our research found that most reporting provisions are issued by governmental bodies, rising by 74% since 2016 to almost 400, while engagement by market regulators has also grown significantly. This shows how the economic and market implications of diverse ESG topics are becoming more evident.
Attention is often focused on requirements and guidance from governments and stock exchanges, but more prominent has become a third group, namely financial market regulators. These include central banks, financial supervisory authorities, banking commissions and financial reporting councils. As sustainability topics become more mature and market mechanisms are created to deal with them, these institutions are more likely to step in and take on a role in ensuring reliable information and data is reported. A clear example is climate and greenhouse gas reporting requirements, as a follow up to the recommendations by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD).
In response to greater regulatory interest in the climate theme, GRI has worked with securities market regulators in many jurisdictions to support the development of disclosure regulation. GRI has also undertaken capacity building at the regulator, exchange and issuing company levels to support work on climate-related measurement, reporting and verification.
4.Market context
C&S 2020 demonstrates that Europe continues to drive the ESG agenda, accounting for 245 reporting instruments, while the Asian markets (174) are increasingly active. North America has a low number of provisions (47) — partly due to a lower number of national jurisdictions. At the country level, higher numbers of reporting provisions, including requirements and resources, were found in the UK, Spain, USA, Canada, Brazil, Colombia and China.
These findings leave some questions open, as research suggests that countries and industry sectors with a greater volume of reporting provisions and numbers of reporters tend to be ones where higher quality reports emerge from. It appears from the C&S 2020 data that bigger economies tend to have larger numbers of reporting provisions. Yet more provisions alone do not necessarily represent a sign of a more sustainable economy.
Looking at the EU, the large volume of provisions in Spain and Portugal can be contrasted against a relatively low volume in advanced economies such as Germany and Ireland. The total picture is likely to change in coming years as the EU is pursuing a revision of its Non-Financial Reporting Directive, which will mandate reporting for a large group of companies throughout Europe. Some governments will be more challenged than others to rationalize, align and modernize existing regulations.
5.Reporting formats
Alignment in the sustainability reporting field is still falling short, with greater collaboration needed between standard setters, reporters, information users, regulators and policymakers, to streamline requirements and improve quality. Related to the reliability of data, C&S 2020 illustrates that, among reporting provision issuers, there is still divergence about how and where to disclose. Some refer to annual reports, others to sustainability reports, while many leave this unspecified. Furthermore, there is still variation between issuers around mandating reporting and emphasizing substance or form.
We acknowledge the advantage of integrating non-financial information into the management report, to help ensure align non-financial and financial disclosures. Digital advances are also enabling data users to have direct access to non-financial information from diverse sources, of which the annual report is only one. Aggregating the information into recognized and comparable reporting formats can help ensure that disclosures are subject to the same level of rigor. Mainstreaming and integration will also enable companies to more clearly define the relationship of non-financial disclosure with their operations, elevating ESG matters into corporate-wide decisions.
Looking ahead
How to enable greater corporate transparency, and the encouragement and direction that policy setting facilitates, is a question for countries and markets around the world. And as we reflect on the changes needed to ensure that the global economy can survive and sustainably thrive in the aftermath of the pandemic, it’s an increasingly important one.
The ‘report card’ provided by C&S 2020 signals that good progress is being made, as demonstrated by the widespread increases in reporting provisions. However, the journey is far from complete and some regions are still lagging. We cannot afford ill-informed markets and unsubstantiated claims of societal legitimacy. That is why we need governments, policymakers, stock exchanges, financial regulators, standard setters and companies themselves to continue the momentum towards embracing ESG disclosure as an underpinning mechanism for more sustainable and responsible business practices around the world.
Peter Paul van de Wijs is Chief External Affairs Officer at GRI. Cornis van der Lugtis is Senior Lecturer Extraordinaire at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa.
2020 will go down in the annals as the year of the Corona pandemic – and thus also the year in which it became abundantly clear just how important science journalism is in ensuring that the worldwide public is provided with reliable information. Individual researchers are reaching an audience of millions and have become key advisors for policy-makers and the general public. At the same time, what was already a precarious economic situation for many media companies is now critical.
Against this backdrop, the European conference ‘Science Journalism in the Digital Age’ (SciCon) wants to focus attention on the future of science journalism. What self-image can guide quality science journalism in the digital age? What approaches and partnerships, what business models can lead science journalism into the future? How can we envisage constructive interaction between science journalism and science itself? How can states, foundations and private sector players shape this process of transformation?
PROGRAMME
The Corona pandemic has forced the organisers to change the face-to-face format originally foreseen for the conference. We have now decided to pursue a two-pronged strategy: We have recruited international speakers for online lectures (THE VIRTUAL SCICON LECTURES). Then, at a largely German-speaking event on 29/30 November 2020 in Freiburg (THE SCICON WORKING CONFERENCE), we will hold a working meeting in person. In this meeting, we aim to analyse and discuss how the international experts’ assessments can be productively introduced into the debate on the future of science journalism in Germany.
The virtual SciCon series has begun on 1 October 2020 at 3 pm (CET) with a lecture by Tom Rosenstiel). Rosenstiel is one of the most renowned media experts in the world. According to the Wall Street Journal, his book “The Elements of Journalism”, published in 2001 together with Tom Kovach, is one of the five most important works ever published on journalism.
On 29/30 November, the SciCon working conference will take place in Freiburg. In the light of this diverse experience, journalists, representatives of media companies, foundations, policy-makers and scientists will discuss what should be done in practical terms to create robust structures for tomorrow’s science journalism in Germany.
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Sept. 22, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Google Cloud and Unilever today announced that they will advance sustainable business practices together using technology to expand the use of data for eco-friendly decision making. As an initial step in this partnership, the two companies are collaborating on the first commercial application of Google Cloud and Google Earth Engine for sustainable commodity sourcing.
By combining the power of cloud computing with satellite imagery and AI, the two companies are building a more holistic view of the forests, water cycles, and biodiversity that intersect Unilever’s supply chain — raising sustainable sourcing standards for suppliers and bringing Unilever closer to its goal of ending deforestation and regenerating nature.
Google Cloud and Unilever will work with a broad range of technology partners to build a centralized command center. This will provide a more complete picture of the ecosystems connected to Unilever’s supply chain and create a better mechanism for detecting deforestation—leading to greater accountability — whilst simultaneously prioritizing critical areas of forest and habitats in need of protection.
Unilever, which owns 400+ brands and whose products are used by 2.5 billion people every day, has made sustainability an intrinsic part of its business. The company’s sustainable sourcing initiative, which is initially focused on sustainable palm oil, will be extended to other commodities in the future, directly supporting Unilever’s existing work with other technology partners to achieve a deforestation-free supply chain by 2023.
Google Cloud’s planetary-scale geo-spatial platform, including Google Earth Engine, Google Cloud Storage and BigQuery, combines accurate satellite imagery, with the ability to store and make sense of large amounts of complex data. Unilever will use the platform to obtain insights into any impact on sourcing to the environment and local communities, allowing Unilever and its suppliers to take action wherever and whenever it is needed.
Simplifying complex datasets is critical to increasing transparency within supply chains and enabling collaboration across public and private partners. Today, Google Earth Engine is used for planetary-scale image analysis by academic and public institutions, as well as civil society organizations. This first commercial application with Unilever will enable further innovation that can be shared with sourcing partners of all types on a common platform.
“This collaboration with Google Cloud will take us to the next level in sustainable sourcing,” said Dave Ingram, Unilever’s Chief Procurement Officer. “We will now be able to process and combine complex sets of data like never before. The combination of these sustainability insights with our commercial sourcing information is a significant step-change in transparency, which is crucial to better protect and regenerate nature.”
“At Google, we strive to build sustainability into everything that we do. Unilever has been an industry leader in environmental sustainability for many years, and we’re excited to be on this journey with them,” said Rob Enslin, President, Google Cloud. “Together, we’re demonstrating how technology can be a powerful tool in aiding businesses who strive to protect the Earth’s resources. It will require collective action to drive meaningful change, and we are committed to doing our part.”
About Google Cloud Google Cloud provides organizations with leading infrastructure, platform capabilities and industry solutions. We deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions that leverage Google’s cutting-edge technology to help companies operate more efficiently and adapt to changing needs, giving customers a foundation for the future. Customers in more than 150 countries turn to Google Cloud as their trusted partner to solve their most critical business problems.
About Unilever Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of Beauty & Personal Care, Home Care, and Foods & Refreshment products with sales in over 190 countries and reaching 2.5 billion consumers a day. It has 150,000 employees and generated sales of €52 billion in 2019. Over half of the company’s footprint is in developing and emerging markets. Unilever has around 400 brands found in homes all over the world, including Dove, Knorr, Dirt Is Good, Rexona, Hellmann’s, Lipton, Wall’s, Lux, Magnum, Axe, Sunsilk and Surf.
Unilever’s Sustainable Living Plan (USLP) underpins the company’s strategy and commits to:
Helping more than a billion people take action to improve their health and well-being by 2020.
Halving the environmental impact of our products by 2030.
Enhancing the livelihoods of millions of people by 2020.
The USLP creates value by driving growth and trust, eliminating costs and reducing risks. The company’s sustainable living brands delivered 78% of total growth and 75% of turnover in 2019.
Since 2010 we have been taking action through the Unilever Sustainable Living Plan to help more than a billion people improve their health and well-being, halve our environmental footprint and enhance the livelihoods of millions of people as we grow our business. We have already made significant progress and continue to expand our ambition — most recently committing to ensure 100% of our plastic packaging is fully reusable, recyclable or compostable by 2025. While there is still more to do, we are proud to have been recognised in 2019 as sector leader in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index and as the top ranked company in the Globescan/Sustainability Global Corporate Sustainability Leaders survey, for the ni-consecutive year.
Donald Trump in California last month. Another four years of his leadership would make averting further disaster ‘essentially impossible’, Mann says. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Michael Mann, one of the world’s most eminent climate experts, says Earth’s future ‘is in the hands of American citizens’Mark Hertsgaard@markhertsgaardFri 2 Oct 2020 11.00 BST
This article is published as part of Covering Climate Now, a collaboration of 400-plus news outlets to strengthen coverage of the climate story. The Guardian is the lead partner of CCN.
A professor at Penn State University, Mann, 54, has published hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers, testified numerous times before Congress and appeared frequently in the news media. He is also active on Twitter, where earlier this year he declared: “A second Trump term is game over for the climate – really!”, a statement he reaffirmed in an interview with the Guardian and Covering Climate Now.
“If we are going to avert ever more catastrophic climate change impacts, we need to limit warming below a degree and a half Celsius, a little less than three degrees Fahrenheit,” Mann said. “Another four years of what we’ve seen under Trump, which is to outsource environmental and energy policy to the polluters and dismantle protections put in place by the previous administration … would make that essentially impossible.”
None of Mann’s 200-plus scientific papers is more famous than the so-called “hockey stick study”, which Nature published on Earth Day of 1998. With two co-authors, Mann demonstrated that global temperature had been trending downward for the previous one thousand years. Graphed, this line was the long handle of the hockey stick, which surged abruptly upwards in about 1950 – represented by the blade of the stick – to make the 1990s the warmest decade in “at least the last millennium”.
In 1999, Mann became an assistant professor at the University of Virginia, where he was targeted by the climate denier crowd, an experience detailed in his 2012 book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars. He received death threats, he says, and had emails stolen. Virginia’s former attorney general Ken Cuccinelli, a hard-right Republican, subpoenaed documents related to Mann’s research funding in an effort to prove fraud. A Washington Post editorial blasted Cuccinelli for “mis[using] state funds in his own personal war against climate science”. In 2014, affirming a lower court’s decision, the supreme court of Virginia ruled against Cuccinelli, who now serves as a top official in Trump’s Department of Homeland Security.
Mann denies that it’s a partisan statement to say that four more years of Trump would mean “game over” for the climate.
Michael Mann, seen in March. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian
“It is a political statement, because it speaks to the need to enact policies to deal with climate change,” he says. “But it isn’t partisan to say that we should act on this crisis.”
It’s also a scientific statement, Mann adds. Two years ago this month, scientists with the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a landmark study, Global Warming of 1.5 Degrees, which found that humanity had to cut heat-trapping emissions roughly by half by 2030 to avoid catastrophic climate breakdown. Headlines warned we had “12 years to save the planet”. Those 12 years are now 10.
Except more than two years have been lost, because in that time, the Trump administration has prevented the world’s biggest economy from making “the dramatic reductions that were necessary to keep us on that path” of halving emissions by 2030, Mann says. “So now the incline is steeper. It’s no longer 5% [reductions] a year for the next 10 years. It’s more like seven and a half per cent.” (As a comparison, 7% is how much global carbon emissions are projected to fall in 2020 due to the Covid-19 economic lockdowns that shrank driving, flying and other carbon-intensive activities.)
This is a Tolkienesque battle between good and evil, and Sauron needs to be defeated on election day
Michael Mann
The numbers get unrealistically challenging if Trump gains another four years as president.
“Four more years of relative inaction, of flat emissions, means that four years from now that number might be closer to 15% [emissions reductions] a year,” Mann says. “And that may be, although not physically impossible, societally impossible. The rate at which we shift away from a fossil-fuel-driven infrastructure, it just may not be economically possible or socially viable to do it that [fast].”
‘Our destiny is determined by our behavior’
Fortunately, there is encouraging news about climate science as well. It was long thought that Earth’s climate system carried a substantial lag effect, mainly because carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere, trapping heat, for many decades after being emitted. Even if all CO2 emissions were halted overnight, global temperatures would keep rising and heatwaves, droughts, storms and other impacts would keep intensifying “for about 25 to 30 years”, Sir David King, the former chief science advisor to the British government, said in 2006.
Using new, more elaborate computer models equipped with an interactive carbon cycle, “what we now understand is that if you stop emitting carbon right now … the oceans start to take up carbon more rapidly,” Mann says. Such ocean storage of CO2 “mostly” offsets the warming effect of the CO2 that still remains in the atmosphere. Thus, the actual lag between halting CO2 emissions and halting temperature rise is not 25 to 30 years, he explains, but “more like three to five years”.
This is “a dramatic change in our understanding” of the climate system that gives humans “more agency”, says Mann. Rather than being locked into decades of inexorably rising temperatures, humans can turn down the heat almost immediately by slashing emissions promptly. “Our destiny is determined by our behavior,” says Mann, a fact he finds “empowering”.
A polar bear leaps over melting ice, Svalbard archipelago, Norway. Photograph: Paulette Sinclair/Alamy Stock Photo
This reprieve will not necessarily spare polar ice sheets or evade tipping points that cannot be recrossed, the scientist cautions, and Earth is already experiencing “much more extreme weather … than we expected 10 years ago”. Greenland and Arctic ice is already melting after the current temperature rise of 1C, or 2.7F, above preindustrial levels, and it will continue melting even without further warming. The resulting possibility of “massive sea level rise” is one example of why Mann says that humanity is “walking out on to a minefield” of tipping points: “The more we warm the planet, the more of those unwelcome surprises we might encounter.”Guardian/Vice poll finds most US 2020 voters strongly favor climate actionRead more
In the face of this urgency, Mann broadly supports implementing a Green New Deal. This he defines as a vast government effort that deploys both regulations – for example, no more coal plants – and market mechanisms like carbon pricing to transition away from fossil fuels as rapidly as possible. In the coming weeks, he adds, there is no more important way for US citizens to exercise agency than to vote – vote for candidates who support such a transition, such as Joe Biden, and against Donald Trump and other Republicans who obstruct it.
“The future of this planet is now in the hands of American citizens,” he says. “It’s up to us. The way we end this national and global nightmare is by coming out and voting for optimism over pessimism, for hope and justice and progress over fear and malice and superstition. This is a Tolkienesque battle between good and evil, and Sauron needs to be defeated on election day here in the United States.”
Mark Hertsgaard, the executive director of Covering Climate Now and the environment correspondent for the Nation, has covered climate change since 1990 for leading outlets around the world and in books including Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth.
The Trustees of the IFRS Foundation have published a Consultation Paper to assess demand for global sustainability standards and, if demand is strong, assess whether and to what extent the Foundation might contribute to the development of such standards.
The IFRS Foundation was established to develop a single set of globally accepted accounting standards. It is the organisation behind IFRS Standards—financial reporting standards required for use by more than 140 jurisdictions. The Trustees are responsible for the strategic direction and governance of the Foundation as well as for oversight of the International Accounting Standards Board, which sets IFRS Standards.
Amid heightened focus on environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters, developments in sustainability reporting and increased calls for standardisation of such reporting, the Trustees are now seeking stakeholder input on the need for global sustainability standards and gauging support for the Foundation to play a role in the development of such standards.
The Consultation Paper sets out possible ways the Foundation might contribute to the development of global sustainability standards by broadening its current remit beyond the development of financial reporting standards and using its experience in international standard-setting, its well-established and supported standard-setting processes and its governance structure.
One possible option outlined in the paper is for the Foundation to establish a new sustainability standards board. The new board could operate alongside the International Accounting Standards Board under the same three-tier governance structure, build on existing developments and collaborate with other bodies and initiatives in sustainability, focusing initially on climate-related matters.
Erkki Liikanen, Chair of the IFRS Foundation Trustees, said:
Calls for standardisation and comparability of reporting on sustainability and climate-change issues continue to grow as these matters become increasingly important to capital markets. We therefore seek to assess whether there is demand for global sustainability standards and whether the IFRS Foundation should play a role in developing such standards.
The Consultation Paper sets out critical success factors for the creation of a new board, including achieving sufficient support from public authorities and market participants; working with regional initiatives to achieve global consistency and reduce complexity in the reporting landscape; achieving the appropriate level of funding; and ensuring the current mission of the IFRS Foundation is not compromised.
The Trustees are required to consult on the Foundation’s strategy every five years and this Consultation Paper, based on work by a smaller Trustee Task Force, feeds into their current assessment of future strategy. Any changes to the Foundation’s remit would be subject to further public consultation.
You can sign up to receive email alerts about any developments in this project by clicking the ‘Follow’ button on the project page (you must be registered with eIFRS—registration is free).
Webinars discussing the Consultation Paper will be scheduled during the consultation period—further information will become available on the project page.
Paying local people to protect their trees may prevent the loss of forest cover, at least where implemented appropriately for the context. Many millions of dollars have been invested in such programmes, but unfortunately the quality of research has not matched the level of investment, so these findings remain tentative. There is some suggestive evidence that those payments also help their recipients economically, but the research on that point suffers from a high risk of bias, so it’s hard to be sure.
This evidence comes from a systematic review which draws together findings from 44 quantitative impact evaluations of 18 different environmental protection programs, so the results are more reliable than findings from an individual study. The review also synthesizes findings from an additional 60 qualitative studies, which provide insights on programme design and implementation. The environmental programmes took place in Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and Sub-Saharan Africa.
This review assembles the best evidence that exists, but nonetheless it is of low quality. More high-quality research is needed to be confident in these findings. For environmental outcomes, one concern is that many studies did not report them, even though it was a programme goal. These missing results suggest imply that there may be publication bias, where only successful programmes publish results, while unsuccessful ones hide them. The evidence on socio-economic outcomes is arguably even worse. Many of the studies which find positive economic outcomes did not identify a valid comparison group outside the program, making those findings less credible. The studies with more credible designs tended to find no effect on recipients’ economic well-being.
The environmental programmes in the review, broadly referred to as “payment for environmental services” programmes, varied in scope, scale, and focus. Most of them were focused on protecting existing forests, although some provided incentives to convert farm land back to a natural state by planting trees. Some were national or regional programmes with broad eligibility criteria. Others were quite specific, like Cambodia’s bird nest protection program, which provided payments for the protection of the nests of specific endangered birds and the trees they were in.
The programmes which appeared to yield the biggest benefits were the ones where participants were carefully targeted. In terms of environmental benefits, that targeting meant identifying the specific areas which were at highest risk of deforestation. If this targeting was not done correctly, landowners sometimes only enrolled the portions of their land with the least valuable trees, which they would not have cut down anyway.
If a programme’s goal was primarily to help local communities economically, that targeting required identifying marginalized and vulnerable social groups. On this front, appropriate targeting was not the only hurdle. In some cases, programme effectiveness was hindered because potential participants either did not know about the programs or did not understand them.
Relatedly, the review suggests that higher-income people with more diversified sources of income and larger landholdings were most likely to participate in the programmes. On the flip side, people whose livelihoods depended more on forests were less likely to enroll. Both of these findings suggest that people consider the opportunity costs of the programmes when enrolling. So in programmes with broad eligibility criteria based on individual-level enrollment, the poorest people are the least likely to participate.
These findings reinforce the importance of targeting. If a programme’s goal is to protect trees on poor people’s land or to provide them with economic benefits, it would need to specifically target them, ensure they understand the program’s benefits, and facilitate their enrollment – as some programmes have done.
The Uganda study was the only evaluation to analyze whether the programme led to greater spill-over deforestation on nearby, not-enrolled land. It did not identify any such negative effects of that programme. But since none of the other studies conducted such an analysis, it is possible that such negative spillovers could occur if targeting is not correctly designed.
Payments for environmental services are not the only strategy to reduce deforestation. Our next 2020 Hindsight post will look at decentralizing forest management to protect trees. In short, that approach also appears to help forests, although it may not provide economic benefits.
More details about this review, including a summary brief, are available here. And our Development Evidence Portal has hundreds more systematic reviews and thousands more impact evaluations on a wide range of development topics.This blog is part of our campaign 2020 Hindsight: What works in Development. Learn more about the campaign and read past blogs here.
**Full recording of the event is available on the Climate Week NYC media portal**
Monday, September 21 2020, New York City – During a discussion at Climate Week NYC today, Christiana Figueres, Former Executive-Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) told Alok Sharma, COP26 President and UK Secretary for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS), that he’d “won the lottery” as he will preside over the Paris Agreement’s first global stocktake.
The two leading climate figures, who were part of the session Conquering the Climate Decade: Have the events of 2020 shifted what governments and businesses can get done?, joined other global leaders gathering for Climate Week NYC this week. Run by international non-profit the Climate Group, it is the only major international climate summit taking place this year.
While lauding the opportunity of being COP President at such a historic moment, Figueres also commented on the significant difficulty Sharma faces as a result of the global pandemic and ensuing economic crisis. Responding to questions on how he is navigating the challenges and his plans for making the UN climate change conference, COP26, due to be held in Glasgow next year, a success, he said:
“There’s real desire to make COP26 a success, for us collectively to work to tackle climate change…. We are at that tipping point where business, civil society, individuals, but also governments are realising we do need to build back better. And from a UK perspective, we have set out some green measures in terms of that green recovery. I feel confident that we are at the point where we’re going to go forward collectively and achieve what I think some months ago wouldn’t have been thought of as possible, and that is this momentum for a green recovery.”
He added that during conversations with ministers in over 35 countries, he emphasized:
“If ever there was a time to come forward with green recovery packages, this is it.”
Increasing investment in green infrastructure The event also included a panel focused on investing in a clean future. Panelists Dr Richard Mattison, CEO of Trucost, Catherine McKenna, Canadian Minister of Infrastructure and Communities, Pedro J Pizarro, President CEO of Edison International, Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO and Chairperson of Global Environment Facility and Dr Rhian-Mari Thomas OBE, CEO of Green Finance Institute, discussed big questions, including who should ultimately foot the bill for a just transition?
Catherine McKenna, Canadian Minister of Infrastructure and Communities said:
“One day we will get out of COVID, but we’re not getting out of the climate crisis any time soon. And we’re not going to get out of it without concerted action, including investing the billions that we need to transition to a cleaner, future.”
Talking about managing transition risks, she highlighted that people need to be at the heart of a green recovery, ensuring that everyone is included in the move to net zero:
“In Canada, that means that our most marginalized, like our Inuit, who live in the Arctic, who have caused the least to cause climate change need to be part of it. But that also means oil and gas workers need to be part of this transition.”
Racial justice, gender justice and climate justice The final panel discussed the interplaying relationships between racial justice, gender justice and climate justice. Speakers Mandela Barnes, Lieutenant Governor in Wisconsin, Damià Calvet, Minister of Territory and Sustainability in Catalonia, Alexandra Liftman, Global Environmental Executive at Bank of America, and Nancy Mahon, Senior Vice President of Global Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability at The Estée Lauder Companies, explored what their responsibilities – as businesses and governments – are to the next generation, and the work needed in changing institutions and systems to create a fairer future.
Lieutenant Governor Barnes, said:
“We need an inclusive approach to climate action because the status quo of leaving certain communities behind has led us to the brink of multiple crises. Centering the voices of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color is the only way forward to a just, sustainable world.”
Alexandra Liftman, Global Environmental Executive at Bank of America added:
“We have to address inequities, and people have spoken to the inequitable impact of environmental issues, in particular on Black and Latinx and low-income communities across the globe… Those communities are not benefiting from the billions of dollars that are being invested today in the transition. I love all my white male colleagues, but clean energy sectors and clean technology sectors are predominately male and predominantly white today, and if we’re going to take that from billions to trillions, all communities have to benefit from that investment.”
For the first year, Climate Week NYC is taking place virtually. Featuring over 450 events hosted in more than 20 different countries, the week is ensuring that climate remains on the agenda in spite of the pandemic.
For more information follow the Climate Group on Twitter and the hashtag #ClimateWeeKNYC. Make sure to download the new Climate Week NYC mobile app to keep up to date with everything going in during the week. All events will be available to watch on the Climate Group’s Facebook Watch page. Visit our website for more information.
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NEW YORK CITY, NY (September 23, 2020) – Today, the City Climate Finance Gap Fund (“The Gap Fund”) was launched jointly by ministers and directors of the Governments of Germany and Luxembourg together with the World Bank, European Investment Bank, and Global Covenant of Mayors. It paves the way for low-carbon, resilient, and livable cities in developing and emerging economies by unlocking infrastructure investment at scale.
The Gap Fund will support city and local governments facing barriers to financing for climate-smart projects. Filling a gap in available project support, the Gap Fund offers technical and advisory services to assist local leaders in prioritizing and preparing climate-smart investments and programs at an early stage, with the goal of accelerating preparation, enhancing quality, and ensuring they are bankable.
With a target capitalization of at least €100 million, the Gap Fund will accelerate investments supporting cities in developing and emerging economies, as they determine goals and objectives for low-carbon and well-planned urbanization. The Gap Fund investment is aiming to unlock at least €4 billion of final investment in climate-smart projects and urban climate innovation.
“What cities do today will forever shape our climate tomorrow,” said Mari Pangestu, World Bank Managing Director for Development Policy and Partnerships. “Cities in developing countries urgently need resources to realize their climate ambitions. Through the Gap Fund, the World Bank is supporting low-carbon, resilient, inclusive, healthy, creative, and sustainable communities for all.”
Cities are on the frontlines of the climate emergency and currently account for around 70 percent of global CO2 emissions. Urban centers’ share of emissions is expected to grow as 2.5 billion people migrate from rural to urban areas by 2050. Before the COVID-19 pandemic struck, it was estimated that more than $93 trillion in sustainable infrastructure investment was needed by 2030 to meet climate goals. As cities strive to recover from the economic impacts of COVID-19, investments in clean energy, climate-resilient water and sanitation, and urban regeneration projects will play an important role in eliminating pollution, improving local food systems, and creating green jobs. They will also lead to cleaner, healthier, and more equitable communities – conditions that can help prevent future pandemics.
Climate investment projects are an indispensable opportunity to improve lives of the millions who live in cities around the world. However, cities frequently lack the capacity, finance, and support needed for the early stages of project preparation – especially in developing and emerging economies. This leads to impasses where cities cannot move project ideas to late-stage preparation and implementation. This hurdle is frequently overlooked by national and international support – a challenge the Gap Fund will seek to overcome.
The Gap Fund is an initiative of the governments of Germany and Luxembourg together with the Global Covenant of Mayors for Climate and Energy (GCOM), in partnership with several other key players in the climate finance arena (including C40, ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, and Cities Climate Finance Leadership Alliance). It will be implemented by the World Bank and the European Investment Bank. The Gap Fund was announced at the UN Climate Action Summit 2019 as a key initiative of LUCI, the Leadership for Urban Climate Investment, which promotes financing for ambitious urban climate action until 2025. Core donors to the Gap Fund are Germany (€45 million – including €25 million from the Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety, and €20 million from the Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development) and Luxembourg (€10 million).
This paper assesses the importance of a strategic legal framework for action against climate change, using the UK Climate Change Act as an example. Passed in 2008, the Climate Change Act is one of the earliest and most prominent examples of framework legislation on climate change. It contains several innovative features that have since been replicated in other framework laws. We use stakeholder interviews to assess the strengths of the Act and whether it has succeeded in creating an integrated, informed and forward-looking policy process. Respondents felt that the Act had established a firm long-term framework with a clear direction of travel. However, they differed on whether the Act provided sufficient policy certainty and protection against political backsliding. Most respondents felt that the Act had changed the institutional context and the processes through which climate change is addressed. As a result, interviewees believe that the Act has helped UK climate policy to become better informed, more forward looking and better guided by statutory routines.
Key policy insights
A strong legal framework with statutory targets, processes and institutions can be an important tool for effective climate change governance.
A broad-based framework law can make action on climate change more predictable, more structured and more evidence-based.
The UK Climate Change Act is a model for such framework legislation, with important institutional features that have already been emulated in other framework laws.
The main such features are statutory short-term and long-term emissions targets, a new independent advisory body (the Committee on Climate Change), clear accountability and an iterative approach to adaptation planning.
Climate Policy is a leading international peer-reviewed academic journal, publishing high quality research and analysis on all aspects of climate change policy, including adaptation and mitigation, governance and negotiations, policy design, implementation and impact, and the full range of economic, social and political issues at stake in responding to climate change. It provides a platform for new ideas, innovative approaches and research-based insights that can help advance climate policy in practice.
