Author: Llewelyn Hughes, GWU
Last year the US and Japanese governments affirmed their joint commitment to fight climate change by cooperating in developing clean energy. Both countries are also pursuing green innovation independently. These efforts are crucial in responding to climate change.
The emerging battle between auto manufacturers in Japan, the United States and Europe over standards for electric vehicles shows, however, that green innovation is as much about competitiveness Read more…
Author: Ashwini K Swain, Delhi
After the global financial crisis governments were asked to support industrial activities, and eventually many states decided to restructure their industrial policy.
After all, there is a new reason for industrial policy — the problem of climate change. Read more…
Authors: Manish Vaid, ORF, and Tridivesh Singh Maini, New Delhi
Bangladesh’s vulnerability to climate change is the main reason behind its number six ranking on the 2011 UN World Risk Index — the highest within South Asia.
UN projections indicate that a sea level rise of 0.5 metres could see Bangladesh lose approximately 11 per cent of its land by 2050, which would affect around 15 million people. Read more…
Author: Sahara Piang Brahim, NUS
Southeast Asia is experiencing sustained economic growth and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future.
A recent OECD forecast shows that the region is expected to achieve an annual average growth rate of 5.5 per cent from 2013 to 2017. Read more…
Authors: Adele C. Morris, Brookings Institution, Warwick J. McKibbin, ANU and Brookings Institution, and Peter J. Wilcoxen, Syracuse University and Brookings Institution
China’s Ministry of Finance recently announced a carbon tax.
Read more…
Author: Fatih Birol, IEA
The global energy map is being redrawn.
The International Energy Agency’s World Energy Outlook 2012 (WEO-2012) projects that resurgent oil and gas production in the United States, which temporarily overtakes Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest oil producer before 2020, to be a key engine of change in energy markets. Read more…
Author: Kevin Jianjun Tu, Carnegie Endowment
China is rich in coal — so rich that coal lies at the heart of any solution to prevent climate change.
Coal accounts for 70 per cent of the country’s primary energy consumption, and coal-fired carbon emissions in China were 17 per cent higher than national carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2010, according to the International Energy Agency. Read more…
Author: David Hodgkinson, The Hodgkinson Group
The 18th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) met in Doha recently, while the Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP) gathered for the eighth time.
Read more…
Author: Catherine Pelling, Global Voices and RMIT
Popularly termed ‘climate change refugees’, people displaced and forced to migrate as a result of the effects of climate change — rising seas, flooding, drought, extreme weather and food insecurity — continue to be severely under-recognised in the UN climate change process.
Read more…
Authors: Xunpeng Shi and Brett Jacobs, ERIA
Coal will continue to play a large role in world energy supplies in the medium term, particularly in rapidly industrialising countries such as India and China.
Notwithstanding the increasing number of environmental regulations on coal use since the 1970s, global demand for coal has increased steadily in the past three decades. Read more…
Author: Olivia Boyd, ANU
The motivations for China’s recent energy and climate change policies are far more complex than the stereotypical view of China as a country bent on the pursuit of economic growth at all costs would allow.
Since the release of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan in 2006, China has reduced its energy intensity (energy used per unit of GDP output) by almost 20 per cent. Read more…
Author: Matthew Dornan, ANU
In the weeks preceding the Rio+20 summit, various Pacific island countries adopted ambitious voluntary renewable energy targets as part of the Barbados Declaration. Read more…
Author: Mutsuyoshi Nishimura, Japan
The woes of the current United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference of the Parties approach to climate change are due to its age-old ‘reduction paradigm’ of national emissions, where governments are legally held accountable for reducing the emissions of their private enterprises.
Yet, they are given latitude to pledge their reduction commitments according to their ambitions, which are intrinsically arbitrary. At best, the whole system is a ‘do your best’ game, and at worst it is tragically disconnected from science. Read more…
Author: Michael T. Rock, RFF
There is little doubt that mitigating climate change will ultimately require Indonesia and other governments to cap and reduce their CO2 emissions.
Currently, CO2 emissions in Indonesia predominantly arise from land-cover change (such as deforestation), but it is only a matter of time before emissions from industry come to dominate. Read more…
Authors: Ben Crow and Nirvikar Singh, UCSC
The great Himalayan rivers of South Asia, particularly the Ganges and Brahmaputra, have been the subject of five decades of discussion between governments of the region.
While the discussions have continued, these rivers have contributed, through flood and drought, to the uncertainty and impoverishment of the lives of the largest concentration of poor people anywhere in the world. Read more…
