Escaping the climate policy uncertainty trap: options contracts for REDD+

Climate policy uncertainty significantly hinders investments in low-carbon technologies, and the global community is behind schedule to curb carbon emissions. Strong actions will be necessary to limit the increase in global temperatures, and continued delays create risks of escalating climate change damages and future policy costs. These risks are system-wide, long-term and large-scale and thus hard to diversify across firms. Because of its unique scale, cost structure and near-term availability, Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and forest Degradation in developing countries (REDD+) has significant potential to help manage climate policy risks and facilitate the transition to lower greenhouse gas emissions. ‘Call’ options contracts in the form of the right but not the obligation to buy high-quality emissions reduction credits from jurisdictional REDD+ programmes at a predetermined price per ton of CO₂ could help unlock this potential despite the current lack of carbon markets that accept REDD+ for compliance. This approach could provide a globally important cost-containment mechanism and insurance for firms against higher future carbon prices, while channelling finance to avoid deforestation until policy uncertainties decline and carbon markets scale up.

Key policy insights

• Climate policy uncertainty discourages abatement investments, exposing firms to an escalating systemic risk of future rapid increases in emission control expenditures.

• This situation poses a risk of an abatement ‘short squeeze,’ paralleling the case in financial markets when prices jump sharply as investors rush to square accounts on an investment they have sold ‘short’, one they have bet against and promised to repay later in anticipation of falling prices.

• There is likely to be a willingness to pay for mechanisms that hedge the risks of abruptly rising carbon prices, in particular for ‘call’ options, the right but not the obligation to buy high-quality emissions reduction credits at a predetermined price, due to the significantly lower upfront capital expenditure compared to other hedging alternatives.

• Establishing rules as soon as possible for compliance market acceptance of high-quality emissions reductions credits from REDD+ would facilitate REDD+ transactions, including via options-based contracts, which could help fill the gap of uncertain climate policies in the short and medium term.

     

Traces of the secondary Geography curriculum

Abstract: Expressions of dissatisfaction about the post‐compulsory Geography curriculum in the early 1970s were unusually concerted, leading to the creation of a National Geography Curriculum Committee. This essay reviews this history and the resulting Syllabus for Schools: Geography Forms 5–7 as a prelude to a discussion of contemporary curriculum development. The essay argues that curriculum development from 1975 and the ‘education reforms’ of the late 1980s failed to produce conditions in which satisfactory outcomes for a Geography curriculum can be assured in 2005, and that a new and concerted period of participation in curriculum discussion is required. Some goals for this process are outlined in the final section of the paper.     

Effects of demand estimates on the evaluation and optimality of service centre locations

Public service systems, such as emergency health care, police or fire brigades, are critical for day-to-day functioning of the society. To design and operate these systems efficiently much data needs to be collected and properly utilised. Here, we use the OpenStreetMap (OSM) data to model the demand points (DPs), which approximate the geographical location of customers, and the road network, which is used to access or distribute services. We consider all inhabitants as customers, and therefore to estimate the demand, we use the available population grids. People are changing their location in the course of the day and thus the demand for services is changing accordingly. In this paper, we investigate how the used demand estimate affects the optimal design of a public service system. We calculate and compare efficient designs corresponding to two demand models, a night-time demand model when the majority of inhabitants rest at home and the demand model derived from the 24-hour average of the population density. We propose a simple measure to quantify the differences between population grids and we estimate how the size of differences affects the optimal structure of a public service system. Our analyses reveal that the efficiency of the service system is not only dependent on the placement strategy, but an inappropriate demand model has significant effects when designing a system as well as when evaluating its efficiency.     

Mapping the Stakeholders: Using Social Network Analysis to Increase the Legitimacy and Transparency of Participatory Scenario Planning

Participatory scenario planning (PSP) processes rely on accurate stakeholder identification to develop a key set of critical uncertainties. While many stakeholder analysis methods are able to identify stakeholders and describe their relationships, we found these efforts to have limited use in the fast-moving and in-depth approach of PSP research. We find that social network analysis (SNA) is an efficient, objective, and transparent approach to stakeholder identification in highly contested natural resource management issues. We present a case study of our research on Alaska’s Kenai Peninsula to describe how SNA’s ability to contextualize the relations between actors can benefit participatory research.     

Older People and Transitions from Employment to Nonemployment: International Perspectives and Policy Issues

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) has identified population aging as one of the most important challenges facing OECD countries and has highlighted the need for people to work longer and for job prospects for older workers to be enhanced. This article provides a summary review of a recent OECD report, Ageing and Employment Policies—Live Longer, Work Longer, as a platform to highlight differences between countries in demographic profiles and projections and in patterns of formal labor market participation among older workers. Drawing on selected information from a broader evidence base, it unveils important differences between countries in the scale of demographic and associated labor market challenges. It also explores factors affecting labor market transitions among older workers and age-related and other barriers to paid work among older people, emphasizing the diversity of experience between individuals. Finally, it highlights some strategic challenges for policy.     

Social and economic consequences of 40 years of Dutch quota management

The Netherlands was one of the first nations to introduce ITQs in their fisheries to manage national yearly Total Allowable Catches (TACs). These ITQs have gradually developed from an individual quota system in 1976 to an ITQ system in the 1980s. In 1993 the system was reformed into a co-management system. In this paper it is argued that many of the usual negative socio-economic consequences of ITQs mentioned in the literature have been largely absent, due to the embeddedness of ITQs in co-management arrangements. However, cracks have appeared lately in this combined management system, allowing an identification of its vulnerabilities. These findings show that the social and economic structure of Dutch fisheries is changing from a rather cooperative to a more competitive and exclusive system, more like conventional ITQs.     

世界天然气水合物研究开发现状和前景

回顾了世界天然气水合物研究历史,分析了世界气水合物研究现状和开发前景,评价了全球天然气水合物资源潜势,提出了我国对天然气水合物的研究策略。     

Emerging trends in urbanizing Palestine: neglected city-builders beyond the occupation

In this article, we draw attention to trends in land transformation in the West Bank since the Second Intifada, after which a surge of investment from Gulf countries entered Palestine, almost exclusively in the West Bank. The occupied Palestinian territories have attracted a great deal of attention from media and academics, yet the vast majority of scholarship focuses on the conflict and the variety of social, economic, and political repercussions of the on-going Israeli occupation. While the occupation has undeniably serious impacts on every aspect of life for Palestinians, the near-exclusive focus on the conflict means that significant new trends, such as urban mega-developments and emerging market-based urbanisation processes, have been largely overlooked. We outline three directions for future research: the assemblage of “neglected city-builders” shaping current urbanization processes in Palestine; the ideas, policies, and norms circulating in the West Bank; and the social, spatial, economic, and other impacts of these new urban developments.     

气候变化影响和适应认知的演进及对气候政策的影响

通过分析IPCC第二工作组的5次评估报告对气候变化影响、适应的主要结论和方法的演进、原因以及对国际适应谈判和国家适应政策的影响,指出由于文献的迅速增加,影响评估方法和适应技术手段的不断成熟,以及思维的转变和意识的逐渐增强,IPCC进一步确认了气候变化已经并将继续对自然生态系统和人类社会产生广泛而深刻的影响;未来社会经济发展路径、适应和减缓行动以及风险治理将影响气候变化带来的风险。IPCC报告极大地推动了国际和各国适应气候变化科学研究和政策实践的进程。尽管中国各级各部门已逐渐将适应融入到相关政策中,但仍然存在认识、能力、体制机制等问题,需要进一步推进国家和各地的适应工作。     

It starts at home? Climate policies targeting household consumption and behavioral decisions are key to low-carbon futures

Through their consumption behavior, households are responsible for 72% of global greenhouse gas emissions. Thus, they are key actors in reaching the 1.5 °C goal under the Paris Agreement. However, the possible contribution and position of households in climate policies is neither well understood, nor do households receive sufficiently high priority in current climate policy strategies. This paper investigates how behavioral change can achieve a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions in European high-income countries. It uses theoretical thinking and some core results from the HOPE research project, which investigated household preferences for reducing emissions in four European cities in France, Germany, Norway and Sweden. The paper makes five major points: First, car and plane mobility, meat and dairy consumption, as well as heating are the most dominant components of household footprints. Second, household living situations (demographics, size of home) greatly influence the household potential to reduce their footprint, even more than country or city location. Third, household decisions can be sequential and temporally dynamic, shifting through different phases such as childhood, adulthood, and illness. Fourth, short term voluntary efforts will not be sufficient by themselves to reach the drastic reductions needed to achieve the 1.5 °C goal; instead, households need a regulatory framework supporting their behavioral changes. Fifth, there is a mismatch between the roles and responsibilities conveyed by current climate policies and household perceptions of responsibility. We then conclude with further recommendations for research and policy.