Professor Tarp has four decades of experience in academic and applied development economics research and teaching. His field experience covers more than two decades of in-country work in 35 countries across Africa and the developing world more...
Climate change poses humanity’s biggest challenge. With climate change now an urgent priority, what can we learn from past successes of development co-operation in the environmental area, its failures, and how can some of these successes be scaled-up in the area of climate change adaption?
Foreign aid has always had a role in addressing environmental issues and in helping with natural disasters. In this animation we look at how aid works in relation to climate change. The film is part of a series produced by UNU-WIDER on the project ‘ReCom–Research and Communication on Foreign Aid’. It can for instance be used when teaching students about environmental challenges.
Filter by...
Working Paper
Development Assistance and Climate FinanceThe distinction between development assistance and climate finance is driven by an optic of compensation largely derived from the ‘polluter pays’ principle. For practical as well as conceptual reasons, this principle provides a weak basis for climate...
Journal Article
Is the Clean Development Mechanism effective for emission reductions?The UNFCCC COP 17 Durban conference confirmed the need to reach an all-party-inclusive global climate agreement by 2015 as the successor of the Kyoto Protocol. Although this Durban ‘road map’ is promising, the international negotiation process for...
Journal Article
Has the Clean Development Mechanism Assisted Sustainable Development?One of the dual objectives of the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the Kyoto Protocol is to assist host countries in achieving sustainable development. With various CDM indicators for 58 CDM host countries over the period 2005-2010, this paper...
Working Paper
Aid and Environment in MozambiqueMozambique benefits from environmental aid-related funds, but it is still unclear whether donor commitments render directly into projects that are copiously implemented for the purposes stated and what aid flows have actually been doing and are doing...
Working Paper
Aid and Environment in AfricaThis paper provides an assessment of what aid has actually been doing in the area of environment in Tanzania through a critical review of the flows, modalities and management of aid. Focusing on the funding for environmental degradation projects, the...
Position Paper
Aid, Environment and Climate ChangeThis position paper on Aid, Environment, and Climate Change, prepared under the UNU-WIDER ReCom programme of Research (Re) and Communication (Com) on foreign aid, is intended to improve the understanding of the role foreign aid has played and can...
Working Paper
Aid and the Environment in AfricaThis study seeks to understand what aid flows have been doing to the environment in eight countries in Eastern, Western and Southern Africa. Total aid to these countries’ environmental sectors for the 2000s decade is about US$10.17 billion and...
Working Paper
‘Ground-Truthing’ Chinese Development Finance in AfricaA new methodology, Tracking Under-Reported Financial Flows (TUFF), allows us to systematically gather open-source information—e.g. news reports, case studies, project inventories from embassy websites, and grant and loan data published by recipient...
Working Paper
Aid and the EnvironmentBotswana has serious environmental problems which, if not addressed, will undermine the attainment of sustainable economic development. This study attempts to determine what aid flows have actually been doing with regard to the environment in...
Working Paper
Aid, Environment, and Climate Change in AfricaThe paper reviews the dynamics of the financing based its analysis on the rich dataset of AidData ranging over 1993-2010, with around 9,077 observations on projects funded in Senegal by various multilateral as well as bilateral donors. The study...
Working Paper
Aid and Environment in Burkina FasoThe main objective of the paper is to determine the actual aid flows that have an environmental focus in Burkina Faso. The environment literature highlights important environment issues in air, land and water, including deforestation, desertification...
Working Paper
REDD+ as Performance-Based AidREDD+, when it officially became part of the international climate agenda in 2007, was an idea about payment to countries and projects for reducing emission from forests, with funding primarily from carbon markets. REDD+ has since become multi...
Working Paper
Aid and the EnvironmentWe investigate allocations of foreign aid by donors to the environment sector in Kenya covering the period 2001-12. Our data are largely obtained from official government and global aid databases complemented with donor interviews. We find that donor...
Working Paper
Environmental and Climate Finance in a New WorldIn this paper we update previous work that categorizes foreign aid projects in terms of their likely impact on the natural environment. We then document trends in the global distribution of environmental aid over time and show that environmental aid...