世界経済・社会統計 = World development indicators

Framework Convention on Climate Change

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change call for deep transformations in every country that will require complementary actions by governments, civil society, science and business. Yet stakeholders lack a shared understanding of how the 17 SDGs can be operationalized. Drawing on earlier work by The World in 2050 initiative, we introduce six SDG Transformations as modular building-blocks of SDG achievement: (1) education, gender and inequality; (2) health, well-being and demography; (3) energy decarbonization and sustainable industry; (4) sustainable food, land, water and oceans; (5) sustainable cities and communities; and (6) digital revolution for sustainable development. Each Transformation identifies priority investments and regulatory challenges, calling for actions by well-defined parts of government working with business and civil society. Transformations may therefore be operationalized within the structures of government while respecting the strong interdependencies across the 17 SDGs. We also outline an action agenda for science to provide the knowledge required for designing, implementing and monitoring the SDG Transformations. The Sustainable Development Goals require profound national and societal changes. This Perspective introduces six Transformations as building blocks for achieving the SDGs and an agenda for science to provide the requisite knowledge.

Six transformations to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals

The Atlas of Economic Complexity: Mapping Paths to Prosperity

Climate change is one of the greatest challenges facing humanity, and we, as machine learning experts, may wonder how we can help. Here we describe how machine learning can be a powerful tool in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and helping society adapt to a changing climate. From smart grids to disaster management, we identify high impact problems where existing gaps can be filled by machine learning, in collaboration with other fields. Our recommendations encompass exciting research questions as well as promising business opportunities. We call on the machine learning community to join the global effort against climate change.

Tackling Climate Change with Machine Learning

The gap between actual carbon prices and those required to achieve ambitious climate change mitigation could be closed by enhancing the public acceptability of carbon pricing through appropriate use of the revenues raised. In this Perspective, we synthesize findings regarding the optimal use of carbon revenues from both traditional economic analyses and studies in behavioural and political science that are focused on public acceptability. We then compare real-world carbon pricing regimes with theoretical insights on distributional fairness, revenue salience, political trust and policy stability. We argue that traditional economic lessons on efficiency and equity are subsidiary to the primary challenge of garnering greater political acceptability and make recommendations for enhancing political support through appropriate revenue uses in different economic and political circumstances. Ambitious carbon pricing reform is needed to meet climate targets. This Perspective argues that effective revenue recycling schemes should prioritize behavioural considerations that are aimed at achieving greater political acceptance.

Making carbon pricing work for citizens

We must exploit socioeconomic tipping points and amplifiers Conventional approaches to mitigating climate change are not working. Despite the actions pledged under the 2015 Paris Agreement, actual progress is falling well short (1). Given limited time and resources, traditional efforts such as the climate stabilization wedge approach (2) are unlikely to be effective on their own. Physical science has shown how complex adaptive systems can cross critical thresholds (“tipping points”) (3), such that a relatively small change can trigger a larger change that becomes irreversible (4), where nonlinear feedback effects act as amplifiers (5). We propose to examine how to exploit similar sensitive intervention points (SIPs) and amplification mechanisms in socioeconomic, technological, and political systems to advance climate change mitigation. We focus on research and policies in which an intervention kicks or shifts the system so that the initial change is amplified by feedback effects that deliver outsized impact.

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Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.

This article presents a theory of the relationship between public perceptions of political corruption and the strength of national climate change mitigation policies, which is then formally tested ...

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Perceptions of Corruption, Political Distrust, and the Weakening of Climate Policy

Technological revolutions have increased the world’s wealth to a level that was once unimaginable. They have done so unevenly, however, and in ways that have accelerated climate change. Technology Transfer and Innovation for Low-Carbon Development argues that most of the emissions reductions required to achieve the Paris Agreement goals can be reached through the global deployment of existing and commercially proven low-carbon technologies (LCTs). Deploying LCTs from high-income countries, which account for 80 percent of all LCT innovations and 70 percent of all LCT exports, to developing countries, where they are needed most, will not be easy; but the evidence is clear that it can be done. Transferring LCTs is not only necessary to meet the climate targets, but it is also an opportunity to achieve development goals. The policies needed to deploy LCTs to developing countries could raise output and employment while yielding welfare benefits, such as reduced air and water pollution. Moreover, adopting LCT offers an opportunity for countries to benefit from participation in global value chains and to become LCT producers and exporters.

Technology Transfer and Innovation for Low-Carbon Development

Carbon-pricing initiatives are spreading at an unprecedented rate, but a considerable gap remains between actual prices and those required to achieve ambitious climate change mitigation. This perspective shows that much of this gap could be closed by enhancing the public’s acceptance of carbon pricing through the effective use of the substantial revenues raised. We synthesize findings regarding the use of carbon revenues both from recent behavioral and political studies as well as from economic analyses of equity and efficiency. We then compare real-world carbon pricing regimes with insights derived from theory. We find that uniform lump-sum recycling of carbon revenues to citizens is favored among behavioral and political studies that emphasize the importance of distributional fairness, revenue salience, political trust, and policy stability amid partisan changes in government. It is also successfully employed in several real-world recycling schemes, although alternative uses of revenues such as green spending may be appropriate in different national contexts.

Ryan Rafaty

Papers

Making carbon pricing work for citizens

Sensitive intervention points in the post-carbon transition.

Perceptions of Corruption, Political Distrust, and the Weakening of Climate Policy

Technology Transfer and Innovation for Low-Carbon Development

Making Carbon Pricing Work