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Green bonds and fossil divestment has emerged as a bottom-up approach to climate action within the business community. Recent pledges by large banks and institutional investors have reached levels that have the potential to contribute markedly to a low carbon transition. This paper traces the impact of green finance in a multiregional global general equilibrium model with non-fossil and non-coal segments of financial flows in addition to the usual unconstrained market for funding. Our high green finance scenario reflects a reasonable upscaling of current level of pledges towards 2030. The study shows that green finance shifts the investments towards industries generating more value added and increasing GDP, future savings and investments. The green finance leads to a lower return on investments and a transfer of income from investors to wage income. Russia and China see the largest cost increase in coal investments due to constraints on finance for fossil industries. The green finance reduces coal consumption by 2.5 per cent below BAU in 2030 and raises the share of non-fossil electricity from 42 to 46 per cent at the global level. Over the whole period towards 2030, the green finance avoids global CO2 emissions corresponding to the total emissions of European Union and Japan in a recent year.

This paper investigates the impact of structural adjustment policies on deforestation taking place when the agricultural frontier advances into forest reserves in Nicaragua. A computable general equilibrium model incorporating deforestation by squatters is used for policy simulations. The opportunity cost of migrating to the frontier does not simply depend on wage income opportunity, but also on market prices of basic grain which determine the capacity to consume beyond subsistence food-level given a certain real wage. Reducing public expenditures both conserves forests and enhances economic growth, while showing positive distributional effects. On the other hand, a strong conservation trend following a sales tax increase is driven by increasing poverty in rural areas. Noticeably, there are policies which initially intensify deforestation, but turn out to ease the pressure on forests over time. Rapid economic growth does not ensure less pressure on forest reserves.

In this paper, a model of the nitrogen cycle in the soil is incorporated in a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) model of the Tanzanian economy, thus establishing a two way link between the environment and the economy. For a given level of natural soil productivity, profit maximising farmers choose a production technique and the optimal production volume, which in turn influences the soil productivity the following years through the recycling of nitrogen from the residues of roots and stover and the degree of erosion. The model is used to simulate the effects of typical structural adjustment policies: a reduction in agro-chemicals subsidies, reduced implicit export tax rate, a devaluation of the currency, a cut in governmental expenditure and a reduction of foreign transfers. The result of a joint implementation is a 9 percent higher GDP level compared to the baseline scenario after 10 years. The effect of soil degradation is found to represent a reduction in the GDP level of more than 5 percent for the same time period.

Soil erosion and soil mining are important environmental problems in many developing countries and may represent a considerable drag on economic development. The cost of soil degradation depends, however, not only on the productivity effects it has on agricultural growth, but also on how the agricultural sectors are linked to the rest of the economy. This article describes an integrated economy–soil-productivity model for Ghana, and through several simulated scenarios we calculate the drag on the Ghanaian economy of soil mining and erosion, and illustrate the effects of different policies aiming at a reduction in these environmental problems.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- List of Figures and Tables -- List of Contributors -- Preface -- 1. Introduction -- 2. Optimal Petroleum Taxation Subject to Mobility and Information Constraints -- 3. Critical Factors in Transnational Oil Companies' Localisation Decisions - Clusters and Portfolio Optimisation -- 4. The Taxing Task of Taxing Transnationals -- 5. Substantial Petroleum Wealth: Does Monetary Policy Regime Matter? -- 6. Saving Petroleum Wealth: Tales of Three Jurisdictions -- 7. Petroleum Policy and Prospects in the UK Continental Shelf -- 8. The Petroleum Tax System Revisited -- Index