The IMF’s April 2025 Regional Economic Outlook for Sub-Saharan Africa presents a clear warning: regional growth is slowing, debt pressures are mounting, and donor assistance is declining. Yet the report outlines critical opportunities particularly in domestic revenue mobilization, structural reform, and private sector activation that can shape a more resilient …
U.S. President Barack Obama said on Tuesday a new global agreement on climate change must include strong commitments from emerging economies and move past the rich-poor country divide that has hampered progress in United Nations negotiations. Obama addressed the U.N. climate change summit with a statement meant to build political …
Efforts to forge a new global agreement on global warming will not repeat the mistakes that dogged the landmark climate summit in Copenhagen five years ago, Ban Ki-moon’s special envoy on climate change has vowed. “This is a different environment to Copenhagen,” Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland, told …
Climate policy is getting nowhere, while climate change continues unchecked. Yet in the midst of this crisis of humankind there is new hope. It has to do with strong movements towards sustainability that have recently been forming everywhere in civil society: social networks, cities and local councils, religious communities, business …
A report by Climate Strategies and CDKN, The Way Forward in International Climate Policy: Key Issues and New Ideas 2014, highlights opportunities and new ways of thinking that could move the world towards an ambitious global climate deal and more climate-compatible development.
The top leaders of China and India aren’t planning to attend this month’s United Nations summit on climate change, signaling tepid support for a global pact to cut greenhouse gases among two of the largest emitters. President Xi Jinping of China and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have told UN …
The Obama administration is looking to reach “a sweeping international climate change agreement” that would not be a formal treaty that would require a two-thirds Senate approval — which almost certainly would never happen, The New York Times reported. Diplomats are trying to reach a deal in time for a …
With the objective of stimulating timely and open discussion of the current attempt to formulate a new climate agreement—to be reached at the 21st meeting of the Conference of Parties (COP-21) in Paris during November of 2015—analysis is conducted of the expected developments in the lead-up negotiations. Based on the …
Companies and research institutes from China and the United States on Tuesday signed deals on eight joint projects for coping with climate change just before a China-US high-level annual meeting opens on Wednesday. The projects address carbon capture, usage and storage, hydrofluorocarbon (HFC) reduction, and the move toward low-carbon cities …
This paper identifies legal, architectural and technical options for operationalising the equity reference framework (ERF). This framework is increasingly being proposed as a means to address the imperatives of effectiveness and equity in the 2015 agreement.
The LDC Group has arrived in Bonn to continue discussions at the UN on reaching a universal, legally-binding agreement on climate change The chair of the Least Developed Countries Group at the UN climate change negotiations has said the latest science tells us that limiting global temperature increases to a …
This paper explores options for a hybrid approach in the 2015 agreement, focusing in particular on mitigation efforts, rather than the broader array of issues under consideration in the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Durban Platform (ADP), such as finance, technology, and adaptation. It looks at the rationales for …
The share of greenhouse gas emissions covered by domestic carbon pricing initiatives increased significantly over the past year, led by the launch of six carbon markets in China. Today, 39 national and 23 sub-national jurisdictions – responsible for almost a quarter of the global greenhouse gas emissions – have implemented …
The aim of this paper is to explore what a flexible and durable climate change agreement could look like and propose pragmatic options for the design of such an agreement. Building some flexibility into the design of the 2015 agreement could make it more durable in the face of new …
The OECD/IEAClimate Change Expert Group (CCXG) has published a paper, titled “GHG or not GHG: Accounting for Diverse Mitigation Contributions in the Post-2020 Climate Framework. The paper highlights that the parties to the UNFCCC are working towards a new climate change agreement in 2015 and are likely to put forward …
Communities across the developing world have a wealth of local knowledge and ingenuity to adapt more successfully to climate change but they urgently need greater international support to unlock their ambitions, Christiana Figueres, Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) said on Wednesday. “In the …
This paper represents an input to sensitize Diaspora around issues of climate change and development. Diaspora communities can instigate policy change both in their old and new homelands. Especially in the fight against climate change, they can play a bridge function so that European and African countries play together their …
Nations risk repeating the failure of climate talks in 2009 unless they sign up to mandatory emissions reductions in a treaty to succeed the Kyoto Protocol, according to Bangladesh's climate envoy to the United Nations. “Unless we have mandatory targets to cut emissions that are enforceable under international law, we …
This working paper explores the question of target “time frame” and its implications for the generation and use of tradable emissions units. Under United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) agreements, some countries have adopted continuous or multiple-year emissions targets, while others have taken on discontinuous or single-year targets, …
Equity and ambition are two issues at the core of the climate negotiations, and they are inextricably linked. Ambition, in the sense of ensuring sufficient mitigation efforts to avoid dangerous interference with the climate system, is a necessary condition to avoid highly inequitable outcomes. Equity, in the sense of ensuring …
National monitoring and evaluation (M&E;) systems in Nepal have evolved rapidly over the past decade. The National Planning Commission has developed new guidelines and approaches to move the Government towards results-based management and the use of sectoral and national indicators. Across Government, there are examples of improvements and good practice …
