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Blue carbon – the carbon stored and sequestered in mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, and tidal salt marshes – is considered a cost-effective means to achieve positive climate change mitigation and adaptation outcomes. Blue carbon is therefore of considerable interest to the scientific and policy communities, and is frequently discussed in relation to carbon markets and climate finance opportunities. This paper identifies peer-reviewed and ‘gray literature’ documents that discuss blue carbon in the context of finance and market mechanisms. The document set is analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively, and the principal scientific, economic, regulatory, social, and management issues that emerge are discussed. The study reveals that (1) the blue carbon literature is dominated by technical and policy commentary, with a dearth of research into practical social considerations and a stark absence of private sector perspectives; (2) there is confusion over the nature and role of important concepts including private and public sector finance and instruments; and (3) understanding of the important issues of investment priorities and risk considerations is also limited. This paper therefore identifies gaps in the blue carbon literature, clarifies critical concepts and issues, and proposes novel pathways for blue carbon research and project development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Climate change and its consequences present one of the most important threats to biodiversity and the functions of ecosystems. The stress on biodiversity is far beyond the levels imposed by the natural global climatic changes occurring in the recent evolutionary past. It includes temperature increases, shifts of climate zones, melting of snow and ice, sea level rise, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events. Natural systems are vulnerable to such changes due to their limited adaptive capacity. Based on an analysis using the DPSIR framework, this paper discusses some of the important socio-economic driving forces of climate change, with a focus on energy use and transportation. The paper also analyses observed and potential changes of climate and the pressures they exert on biodiversity, the changes in biodiversity, the resulting impacts on ecosystem functions, and possible policy responses. The latter can be divided into mitigation and adaptation measures. Both strategies are needed, mitigation in order to stabilise the greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere, and adaptation in order to adjust to changes that have already occurred or cannot be avoided. One mitigation option, increased biofuel production, which is also a response to oil depletion, would change land use patterns and increase human appropriation of net primary production of biomass, thereby threatening biodiversity. By considering the first order and second order impacts of climate change on biodiversity when developing policy measures, it will be possible to integrate ecosystem and biodiversity protection into decision-making processes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Interaction between mitigation and adaptation is a key question for the design of climate policies. In this paper, we study how land use adaptation to climate change impacts land use competition in the agriculture, forest and other land use (AFOLU) sector and how a mitigation policy in agriculture might affect this competition. We use for this purpose two sector-specific bio-economic models of agriculture and forest combined with an econometric land use shares model to simulate the impacts of two climate change scenarios (A2 and B1, 2100 horizon), and a greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture policy consisting of a tax of between 0 and 200 €/tCO 2 equivalent. Our results show that both climate change scenarios lead to an increase in the area devoted to agriculture at the expense of forest which could have a negative impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change. The mitigation policy would curtail agricultural expansion, and thus could counteract the effects of land use adaptation to climate change. In other words, accounting for land use competition results in a reduction of the abatement costs of the mitigation policy in the agricultural sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in human diets hold significant greenhouse gas emissions mitigation potential. In this paper, we use a field experiment to analyze the effects of implementing a label with greenhouse gas emission information for each dish at a restaurant. The traffic-light colored label was implemented in a student catering facility with 300–600 servings every day, and covered all seven dishes on offer. Individual level sales data including an anonymous identification number, gender, and age was collected both during the label phase and during a five-week control phase prior to the introduction of the label. We found that sales of green labeled (low emission) meat dishes increased by 11.5% compared to the control phase, whereas sales of red labeled meat dishes were reduced by 4.8%. Although the label had an effect on consumer behavior, emissions decreased modestly by 3.6%. We did not find evidence for different reactions to the label based on gender or age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ambitious goals to limit global warming can only be reached with a broad acceptance and participation of the general public. This paper relies on surveys among citizens in China, Germany and the U.S. and investigates the determinants of the acceptance of national and international adaptation and mitigation efforts. The empirical findings indicate that specific beliefs and environmental awareness are important drivers in all three countries, while political attitudes and socio-economic characteristics are the main sources of cross-country heterogeneity. The study thereby points at important starting points and target groups for raising the acceptance of national and international climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate the determinants of private flood mitigation in France. We conducted a survey among 331 inhabitants of two flood-prone areas and collected data on several topics, including individual flood mitigation, risk perception, risk experience, and sociodemographic characteristics. We estimate discrete choice models to explain either the precautionary measures taken by the household, or the intention to undertake such measures in the future. Our results confirm that the Protection Motivation Theory is a relevant framework to describe the mechanisms of private flood mitigation in France, highlighting in particular the importance of threat appraisal and previous experience of floods. Some sociodemographic features also play a significant role in explaining private flood mitigation. We also observed that respondents who had already taken precautionary measures have a lower perception of the risk of flooding than respondents who planned to implement such measures at the time of the survey. This result can be explained by the existence of a feedback effect of having taken precautionary measures on risk perception. If subsequent studies support this assumption, it would imply that intended measures, rather than implemented ones, should be examined to explore further the determinants of private flood mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Transformation to climate neutrality of the transport sector raises multiple challenges at a time, with potentially conflicting objectives and further external effects. This calls for a balanced policy package of which empirical assessment is needed in order to i) quantify its effectiveness and ii) reveal effects of potential overlaps and interactions associated with individual measures within the package. This paper analyses the economic, environmental and distributional effects of a policy package that supports low-carbon passenger transport in Austria, co-developed with policy experts and stakeholders. The package includes hard measures such as a mandated phase-out of conventional cars and explicit road pricing, as well as soft measures to foster the uptake of public transportation. To assess these packages we make use of a computable general equilibrium model for Austria that incorporates heterogeneous household groups, CO 2 emissions and a detailed representation of the transport sector. We show that the decoupling of economic welfare and negative external effects of passenger transport is possible with a balanced policy package. Our analysis also highlights potential urban-rural conflicts, regressive impacts and negative public budget implications of single policy measures, issues that the suggested policy package as a whole can mitigate. • We develop policy packages for sustainable passenger transport with experts. • Their effects are analysed using a CGE model of the Austrian economy. • Decoupling of welfare and negative externalities of transport is possible. • Urban-rural conflicts and regressive effects can arise with single measures. • Policy packages can help alleviate potential conflicts and regressive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to analyse and compare the costs of two strategies against transboundary water pollution, mitigation and adaptation measures, which are linked with respect to risk. Chance constraint programming is applied, and the analytical results indicate that total costs for given probabilistic targets are higher (lower) than the costs without risk linkage for negative (positive) covariance between the two classes of measures. A comparison of two international policies—cooperation and national uniform standards—indicates that cleaning under non-cooperative uniform national standards can be increased when considering stochastic pollution and linkage in risk between mitigation and adaptation measures. The empirical application to the Baltic Sea shows that the risk linkage can increase or decrease minimum costs for a given probabilistic target under cooperative solutions by 17 or 13%, and decrease the cost under national uniform policy for a given overall probabilistic target by approximately 10%. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper shows that, under certain conditions (including path dependence and lock-in), policies and measures leading to a cost-effective GHG emissions mitigation in the short term may not allow reaching long-term emissions targets at the lowest possible cost, that is, they might not be cost-effective in the long term. The reason is that, in a situation where currently expensive technologies have a large potential for cost reductions through learning effects and R&D investments, the implementation of incentive-based mitigation policies such as taxes or tradable permits will encourage the adoption and diffusion of currently low-cost abatement technologies, but might not be enough to make attractive the diffusion of expensive ones, which is a necessary condition for these technologies to realise their cost-reduction potential through the aforementioned effects. A simple model and a numerical simulation are provided to show this possible conflict between static and dynamic efficiency, which points out to the need to combine different instruments, some aiming at short-term cost-efficiency (such as incentive-based environmental policy) and others at encouraging dynamic cost reductions (such as technology/innovation policy). [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Biological invasions are recognised to be a problem of growing severity. Human pathogens, weeds or pests in terrestrial systems and dominant alien species in freshwater or marine aquatic systems all impose significant costs in terms of forgone output or costs of control in every major system. Like many of the other environmental consequences of globalisation, biological invasions require that decisions be taken under uncertainty. Decision-makers in such circumstances have to choose between two main strategies: mitigation and adaptation. This paper characterises invasive species problems in terms of the properties of the stochastic processes they induce. It considers how mitigation and adaptation strategies may be modelled, and identifies the conditions in which each approach may be efficient and effective. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]