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Publications (49)
Development aid by itself cannot ‘save the planet’. Yet, development aid and institutions have the potential to remain important catalytic actors in achieving developmental and global environmental objectives. Developing countries must be crucial players in successful climate change mitigation as...
Working Paper
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The 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 finance. The distinction also cuts against the...
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 reaching such a deal is bound to be filled with...
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 empirically assesses whether CDM project development...
Working Paper
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Mozambique 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 in the area of aid and environment in Mozambique...
Working Paper
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– The Case of Tanzania
This 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 study notes that budget expenditure allocation to...
Position Paper
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This 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 help play in local and global environmental issues. The paper lays out the challenges brought on by climate change and the ‘public good’ nature of the environment, the existing responses to the challenges in the aid context, and suggestions for future directions for aid and research efforts in the task of helping developing countries in the mitigation...
Working Paper
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– A Synthesis of Eight Case Studies
This 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 bilateral aid has been on the rise. There seems to have...
Working Paper
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– Field Evidence from South Africa and Uganda
A 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 governments—about Chinese development finance...
Working Paper
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– The Case of Botswana
Botswana 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 Botswana. The results show that although both the...
Working Paper
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– The Case of Senegal
The 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 started in the same year as the establishment of the...
Working Paper
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The 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, irreversible negative effects on biodiversity...
Working Paper
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– General Lessons and Bilateral Agreements of Norway
REDD+, 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-objective; the policy focus has changed from payments...
Working Paper
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– the Case of Kenya
We 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 funding remained significant with emphasis on...
Working Paper
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– How Past Environmental Aid Allocation Impacts Future Climate Aid
In 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 has increasingly focused on global environmental...
Working Paper
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In this paper we discuss aid and the environment in Ghana. Our analysis indicates that expenditure by the government of Ghana has increased consistently since 2000, with seven sectors weakly linked to the environment taking about 78.9 per cent of all government expenditure. Also, the rate of...
Research Brief
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Forest degradation remains a leading environmental problem, given the scale of forest loss and the crucial role of forests to both climate change mitigation and adaptation. Initiatives from the climate change policy arena, especially REDD+, are opening new ways for a broader mainstreaming of forest...
Research Brief
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Development of green cities is one way to help address problems associated with climate change. Curitiba, Brazil, combines integrated sustainable urban planning and strong leadership, resulting in a reduced environmental impact since it began these policies in 1966. Tianjin City, China, emphasizes...
Working Paper
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The sub-Saharan Africa region recorded the fastest conversion of forest land to agriculture in the past 20 years. The region also has the widest yield gap and together with Latin America and Caribbean has the largest unused arable land. However, there are wide variations across countries and this...
Working Paper
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Foreign aid can contribute to sustainable forestry in many ways. The goal is to secure forest benefits of the future, without compromising the needs of the present generations. This paper elaborates on forestry aid as it has evolved in the past. Future directions are suggested, referring to short...
Working Paper
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– Contributing to the Global Public Good
This paper discusses global public goods related to the world’s land resources, their current provision and likely future provision, their potential impacts on the world’s poorest households, as well as prospects for using foreign assistance to enhance these outcomes. Specifically, the paper...
Working Paper
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The fisheries sector in sub-Saharan Africa has benefited from high and increasing amounts of foreign aid for over four decades. In the 1990s when evidence emerged that most stocks were overcapitalized and overfished, the effectiveness of fisheries development aid, particularly those directed at...
Working Paper
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Energy is linked to most of the major global challenges of the twenty-first century. Poverty eradication, climate change, ecosystem management, world health and security are all influenced by energy, its availability, cost, emissions and other impacts. Unfortunately, energy systems as currently...
Working Paper
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– Insights and Applications
The paper examines the role of foreign aid in building capacity to address climate change. While the experience with this topic is relatively recent and not yet extensive, analogous questions have arisen in many other areas of foreign aid. It is likely that climate change aid programmes work best in...
Working Paper
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Although agriculture is important for the livelihood of most Africans, especially the poor, donors did not accord it a high priority. Both volume and share of aid earmarked for agriculture in sub-Saharan Africa not only remained low, around five per cent, but continuously declined between 1981-2001...
Research Brief
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– The Role of Land
Land-based services will become increasingly important as global public goods in the context of changing climate, particularly in terms of mitigation and adaptation. Carbon sequestration, irrigation, infrastructure and local environmental services will all need significant investment in order to...
Research Brief
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– Global Issues, Bilateral Delivery
Levels of environmental aid for global issues are increasing. Environmental aid is increasingly allocated through bilateral aid agencies rather than through the multilateral channels created for this purpose. A consistent demand of developing countries has been that any requirement to pursue...
Research Brief
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– What Works and What Could Work?
Current international agricultural development and food security systems are ill-prepared to address the global agriculture, food and nutrition problems. Structural reforms are necessary to deliver the essential international public goods for improved food security; better co-ordination in the...
Research Brief
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The three goals of promoting development, adaptation to climate change, and climate change mitigation are in reality inseparable policy areas and as such there is a compelling case for addressing them simultaneously. Climate finance aimed at helping developing countries to make adaptations to deal...
Research Brief
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Development aid aimed at increasing productivity in the fisheries sector has at times had a negative effect by encouraging or facilitating overfishing. A percentage increase in capacity enhancing or bad subsidies in sub-Sahara Africa, all else being equal, will increase catch loss per square...
Research Brief
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Review shows that global agricultural production must be increased by about 70 per cent by 2050 in order to provide sufficient nourishment for the world’s growing population. Focusing on tropical climates to 2050, climate change is likely to reduce the rate of agricultural productivity growth. The...
Research Brief
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The goal of economic growth combined with environmental protection in developing countries requires not just financial and technological resources, but also the local capacity to design and implement successful policies. Aid programmes for capacity-building related to climate change are most...
Displaying 32 of 49 results