Suchergebnisse

The economic fallout from COVID-19 resulted in an economic slowdown and a contraction in economic output, changed economic structures, and reduced financial inflows in the five least developed countries (LDCs) of Asia–Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao People's Democratic Republic (PDR), Myanmar, and Nepal. This policy brief discusses these impacts in light of the LDC-graduation procedures of the United Nations together with the challenges that these countries face meeting their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) and the environment-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs 7, 12, and 13). The economic slowdown in Bangladesh, Lao PDR, and Myanmar and a contraction in economic output in Cambodia and Nepal has increased poverty in the five LDCs and is putting pressure on biomass resources in the rural areas of these countries. The change in the structures of their economies, which threatens to reverse processes of economic modernization in these LDCs, is undermining two decades of progress regarding the efficient use of natural resources and the associated reduction in greenhouse-gas (GHG) emissions per unit of gross domestic product (GDP). A decline in financial inflows such as remittances, foreign direct investment, and official development assistance (ODA) is also a risk to both short- and long-term prospects of further investment in renewable energy generation and low GHG-emissions technologies. This policy brief suggests policies that target technical interventions and incentivize small-scale renewable energy technologies that are less susceptible to microeconomic and macroeconomic impacts from external shocks such as COVID-19.

The increasing impacts of climate change, coupled with the Greta Thunberg effect, the findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports, and varied environmental policy documents, are pointing to the need for urgent and cohesive climate action and mitigation frameworks. One potent solution, gaining global acceptance, is that of the Green New Deal (GND), positioned as a radical rethinking of political and economic structures in view of pushing sustainability at the forefront of national, regional, and global issues. With the model rapidly gaining ground in various geographies, and in different forms in view of contextualization needs, there is a need to better understand its evolution, knowledge structures, and trends. This paper thus sets forth to provide an understanding of the evolution and implementation of GND through a biblio-metric analysis and science mapping techniques using VOSviewer and CiteSpace to identify the thematic focus of 1174 articles indexed in the Web of Science since 1995. To understand the thematic evolution of the field over time, we divided the study period into three sub-periods, namely 1995– 2014, 2015–2019, and 2020–2021. These sub-periods were determined considering important milestones related to GNDs. Term co-occurrence analyses were then conducted to understand thematic focus and associated trends. Also, co-citation analysis and bibliographic coupling were other methods applied to identify major sources, authors, publications, and countries that have made more contributions to the development of research on GNDs. The findings of this paper can help both researchers and policy makers understand the evolution and trends of GNDs to better formulate GNDs strategies and policies in accordance with varying needs and geographies.

© 2019 by the authors. With China's commitment to peak its emissions by 2030, sectoral emissions are under the spotlight due to the rolling out of the national emission trading scheme (ETS). However, the current sector policies focus either on the production side or consumption while the majority of sectors along the transmission were overlooked. This research combines input-output modelling and network analysis to track the embodied carbon emissions among thirty sectors of thirty provinces in China. Based on the large-data resolution network, a two-step network reduction algorithm is used to extract the backbone of the network. In addition, network centrality metrics and community detection algorithms are used to assess each individual sector's roles, and to reveal the carbon communities where sectors have intensive emission links. The research results suggest that the sectors with high out-degree, in-degree or betweenness can act as leverage points for carbon emissions mitigation. In addition to the electricity sector, which is included in the national ETS, the study also found that the metallurgy and construction sectors should be prioritized for emissions reduction from national and local levels. However, the hotpots are different across provinces and thus provincial specific targeted policies should be formed. Moreover, there are nineteen carbon communities in China with different features, which provides direction for provincial governments' external collaboration for synergistic effects.