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In this paper, a demand-driven growth model is used to explore climate change scenarios faced by the South African economy. The focus is on key macroeconomic variables including employment, productivity, income distribution, trade, and fiscal balances. Results show that emission reduction alone will not put South Africa on a sustainable and equitable growth path. Expansionary macroeconomic policies are necessary. We show that, under sufficient global mitigation, expansionary fiscal and monetary policies lead to faster output and productivity growth, higher employment, and lower inequality. By contrast, macroeconomic tightening or "free riding" on global emission reduction lead to inferior outcomes, putting sustainable development out of reach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most important challenges of the 21st century is the quest for economic development models that respect the planet's ecosystem. Rather than imposing our industrial systems on nature, why not let nature influence our industrial and innovation systems? From wind turbine blades to bullet trains and solar cells, many of the technologies we rely on today have been inspired by solutions found in nature. Although relatively widespread in the fields of architecture and engineering, biomimicry/biomimetics remains largely overlooked in economics, public policy, and development studies. This is paradoxical because the world's remaining biodiversity stock-a knowledge bank of solutions to both current and unknown challenges- is largely held in developing economies and can be leveraged as a source of inspiration for -and entry door to- industrial innovation. This paper, therefore, investigates the relevance of biomimicry in the formulation of sustainable development strategies in biodiverse developing countries and maps out the national policy landscapes that can advance it. Several findings arise from this study. First, despite the exponential growth of biomimicry as a field and our understanding of its economic impact, what drives nature-inspired innovation remains elusive. Second, the biomimicry innovation landscape is dominated by industrialised economies that have relied on proactive policy interventions, while virtually no developing country has adopted biomimicry as an innovation strategy, consolidating the exploitation of the biodiversity in the developing world by firms in high-income nations. Third, by drawing on empirical evidence from a selection of Latin American countries, this paper shows that while biomimicry presents tremendous opportunities to leapfrog towards high value-added knowledge-intensive activities by using local biodiversity and related expertise as factor endowments, policy, and institutional factors have led to the persistence of important coordination failures that hinder the expansion and commercialization of biomimicry-based R&D. This paper concludes by discussing the public policies needed to support the integration of developing nations at the innovation frontier through biomimicry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate change produces new challenges to the development strategies of the most vulnerable countries, where there is urgent need of effective adaptation policies. However, the uncertainty about the expected costs of climate change and about the benefits of adaptation hampers the design and the implementation of adequate measures. Alternative decision-support tools and decision strategies can be adopted by policy makers and the private investors. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of Portfolio Analysis (PA) as a decision-support tool for adaptation strategies under different climate change scenarios. PA effectiveness is explored in the context of tea plantation investments in Rwanda. Tea is a key commodity for the Rwandan economy, and the agriculture sector is one of the most negatively affected by climatic changes, especially in developing countries. It is a perennial crop, for which investments have high sunk costs and economic returns are highly sensitive to changes in the average temperature and in rainfall distributions. Thus, returns on investments in new tea plants are affected by high climate-induced uncertainty. PA aggregates different investment options into portfolios, instead of considering a single option, and allows identification of an efficiency frontier of best portfolios in terms of trade-off between economic efficiency (expected net present value) and risk (variance of the economic performance). In spite of its advantages, PA remains rarely used in climate change adaptation analysis. In this paper we show how PA can be performed in practice when evaluating adaptation investments against different climate change scenarios. The results show that, using PA, new possible allocations of resources emerge, identifying alternative investment solutions with a better trade-off between economic return and risk. PA here emerges as an effective tool in designing long-term investments in the agriculture sector, robust to the complex and uncertain effects of climate change. A Sensitivity analysis of the results to different social discount rates and different climate change scenarios suggests how these two factors can be relevant for the choice of investment portfolios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under uncertainty about the kind, extent, or time frames of coastal threats, efficient protection requires measures that are effective in time and flexible enough to assure protection even if conditions change over time. Existing protection options are unable to offer both attributes simultaneously, creating a trade-off between short-term and long-term effectiveness in protection choice. This paper investigates the role played by differences in the temporal effectiveness of coastal protection measures in the choice of protection modes. Results from a discrete-choice experiment implemented in Papua New Guinea suggest that respondents have a strong preference for long-term over short-term effectiveness; an urgency to protect cannot be identified. Using incentivized preference measures for patience and risk-aversion as well as sociodemographic controls, we account for taste heterogeneity and validate the robustness of our results. • Adaptation to climate change requires decision making under intertemporal uncertainty. • Our DCE focuses on the role of temporal effectiveness in a developing country context. • Results suggest strong preferences for long-term over short-term effectiveness. • An urgency to protect cannot be identified. • Results are robust to including revealed preference measures for patience and risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research suggests that there is an urgent need to create transitions to agroecology to address the many ecological, social, and ethical problems caused by the hegemonic Corporate Food Regime. In the Global South, however, there are already numerous and diverse agroecological initiatives driven by peasant communities, indigenous peoples, and grassroots organizations. Although many agroecological innovations developed by such grassroots groups have been identified, they have seldom been analyzed under a specific theoretical framework of innovation (e.g., grassroots innovation). To contribute to this gap, in this paper we review the existing literature on agroecology that is concerned with innovation. Further, we analyze three case studies in Michoacán (Mexico) using two theoretical frameworks: grassroots innovation and transitions to sustainability. The cases illustrate different visions and ways of practicing agroecology, as well as the development of several agroecological innovations. Our study provides empirical evidence about the potential of grassroots groups in the Global South for creating innovations that can be useful in the transition to a more just and sustainable food regime based on agroecology. This evidence has important implications for policy making in agriculture, climate change and biocultural conservation. • Grassroots innovations arise from the integration of local, traditional, and scientific knowledges and technologies. • Grassroots groups develop diverse social and technological innovations in agroecology. • Grassroots agroecological innovations (re)produce grassroots' livelihoods, cultural identity and political autonomy. • Grassroots groups may be unable to promote or upscale their agroecological innovations. • Broad support to grassroots agroecological innovation is key to overcome the Corporate Food Regime and build agroecological transitions. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is the introduction to a special issue on 'Sustainable Commodity Governance and the Global South.' A broad range of transnational governance initiatives have emerged to respond to social and environmental challenges caused by commodity production. These initiatives – like voluntary sustainability standards and certifications – tend to target commodity producers in the Global South, but are overwhelmingly initiated and managed by organizations from the Global North. The agency and initiative of Southern actors in addressing sustainability challenges in their own backyards remains under-examined. In this introductory paper, we outline a typology of how commodity producers, civil society groups, and governments in the Global South have responded to the challenge of sustainable commodity production. Drawing inductively on the contributions to this special issue, we argue that Southern actors either participate in transnational governance, reinterpret it in their own context, or create their own initiatives entirely. The capacity of actors in the Global South to exert meaningful influence over sustainable commodity governance is relevant to ongoing debates in ecological economics about whether environmental and social goals can be achieved by working within global value chains or whether a wholesale reconfiguration of the global economy is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]