•Before the pandemic progress toward some SDGs was lacking.•Post-pandemic here may be less financing for attaining the SDGs.•Affordable policies that meet several SDGs simultaneously are ...needed.•Fossil fuel and irrigation subsidy swaps to end water and energy poverty.•Tropical carbon tax to fund natural climate solutions.
Developing countries are highly vulnerable to the COVID-19 pandemic, in part due to the lack of international support for ensuring progress towards the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Yet the mounting financial burden faced by all countries means that additional support is unlikely to be forthcoming in the near future. It is critical that developing countries find innovative policy mechanisms to achieve sustainability and development aims in a cost-effective manner. This requires identifying affordable policies that can yield immediate progress towards several SDGs together and aligns economic incentives for longer term sustainable development. We identify three policies that meet these criteria: a fossil fuel subsidy swap to fund clean energy investments and dissemination of renewable energy in rural areas; reallocating irrigation subsidies to improve water supply, sanitation and wastewater infrastructure; and a tropical carbon tax, which is a levy on fossil fuels that funds natural climate solutions. Such innovative and cost-effective policy mechanisms do not require substantial external support, and they foster greater progress towards achieving the SDGs in poorer economies.
As the most important emerging transportation technology, high-speed rail (HSR) can reshape regional economic development patterns and exert an important effect on the ecological environment. Using a ...panel data set of 275 Chinese cities at the prefecture level and above from 2003 to 2014, this study is the first to adopt a continuous spatial difference-in-differences (SDID) model to investigate the effect and its mechanism of HSR service intensity on CO2 emissions. A series of robustness tests are performed, including the placebo test and using the propensity score matching method combined with the SDID (PSM-SDID) model. We also conduct a heterogeneity analysis using a spatial difference-in-difference-in-differences (SDDD) model. The results show that an increase in HSR service intensity significantly reduces urban CO2 emissions, resulting from the effects of transportation substitution, market integration, industrial structure, and technological innovation. Meanwhile, such an increase inhibits CO2 emissions in neighboring cities with a spatial attenuation boundary of 1000 km. On average, for every addition of 100 HSR trains in a city, the total CO2 emissions can be reduced by 0.14%. Moreover, the CO2 emission reduction effect of HSR is more significant in eastern China, large cities, and resource-based cities. However, higher levels of HSR service intensity in large cities and resource-based cities are not conducive to reducing CO2 emissions in neighboring cities. These findings can help to accurately evaluate the social benefits of expanding HSR networks and provide an important decision-making reference for climate governance during the era of HSR.
•We explore the effect and its mechanism of high-speed rail (HSR) on CO2 emissions.•We use a continuous spatial difference-in-differences model and China's urban data.•An increase in HSR service intensity significantly reduces urban CO2 emissions.•HSR curbs neighboring CO2 emissions with an attenuation boundary of 1000 km.•Every addition of 100 HSR trains in a city can reduce total CO2 emissions by 0.14%.
Tourism in Africa Christie, Iain; Fernandes, Eneida; Messerli, Hannah ...
The World Bank eBooks,
2014.
eBook, Book
Odprti dostop
This report is the first to examine tourism in Africa comprehensively and regionally and the first to recommend practical, evidence-based measures enabling the sectors economic and development power. ...This gives new impetus to the continents development progress by leveraging tourism in pursuit of lasting poverty alleviation and the creation of significantly more jobs and opportunities for all Africans.
Sustainability: a systems approach Clayton, A.M.H; Radcliffe, N.J. (Institute for Policy Analysis and Development, University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh (United Kingdom))
1996
Book
Once again, the Horn of Africa has been in the headlines. And once again the news has been bad: drought, famine, conflict, hunger, suffering and death. The finger of blame has been pointed in ...numerous directions: to the changing climate, to environmental degradation, to overpopulation, to geopolitics and conflict, to aid agency failures, and more. But it is not all disaster and catastrophe. Many successful development efforts at ‘the margins’ often remain hidden, informal, sometimes illegal; and rarely in line with standard development prescriptions. If we shift our gaze from the capital cities to the regional centres and their hinterlands, then a very different perspective emerges. These are the places where pastoralists live. They have for centuries struggled with drought, conflict and famine. They are resourceful, entrepreneurial and innovative peoples. Yet they have been ignored and marginalised by the states that control their territory and the development agencies who are supposed to help them. This book argues that, while we should not ignore the profound difficulties of creating secure livelihoods in the Greater Horn of Africa, there is much to be learned from development successes, large and small. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars with an interest in development studies and human geography, with a particular emphasis on Africa. It will also appeal to development policy-makers and practitioners.
The discourseon the impact of natural resource endowment and its effect on financial development has been an important research area in the last few decades. This study attempts to test the “resource ...curse” hypothesis in case of China for the period of 1987–2017. Unlike others, we introduce additional variables such as technological innovations, human capital, and trade openness into the finance demand function. We used an augmented Dickey-Fuller unit root test with and without structural breaks and Carrion-i-Silvestre et al.’s (2009) generalized least squares based test to examine the stationary properties of the variables. Similarly, to examine the presence of the cointegration relationship between financial development and its determinants, the Maki cointegration with multiple structural breaks approach is applied. The empirical results support the presence of the resource curse; that is, natural resources negatively affect financial development in China. Nonetheless, technological innovations, trade openness, and human capital affect financial development positively. The interaction of human capital and technological innovations is also positively linked with financial development. Our empirical findings have robust policy implications, highlighting the need to promote technological innovations and human capital development for effective use and management of natural resources to promote the development of financial sector.
•It employs the Maki cointegration with multiple structural breaks approach to examine the presence of the cointegration relationship.•Natural resources negatively affect financial development in China.•Technological innovation, trade openness, and human capital affect financial development positively.
When should foreign aid organizations empower actors on the front lines of delivery to rely on their judgment to guide aid interventions, and when should distant headquarters lead? Understanding how ...best to manage the implementation of aid projects matters both for aid effectiveness and for what it tells us about the more general tension between central versus field worker control in organizations.
Countries commencing industrialization with relatively low levels of agricultural productivity, hence low wages, enjoy advantages that can also prove host to daunting challenges. The chief advantage ...is a relatively elastic supply of labor for manufacturing; the chief challenge is how to free up farm labor for factory employment through the raising of labor productivity in farming. Key to raising agricultural labor productivity is providing incentives to increase effort levels including hours worked — access to markets being crucial — and improving the quality of labor as measured by health indicators and educational attainment. The willingness of elites to promote improvements in infrastructure — physical infrastructure in the form of roads and railroads and hydroelectric systems; human capital enhancing infrastructure augmenting the educational attainment and health of populations in rural areas; and financial infrastructure — and to invest directly in factories is crucial to the process by which labor is transferred from farming to manufacturing activities. During the period 1850 to 1935 elites in China tended to resist the requisite changes while elites in Japan did not. This legacy played a crucial role in shaping the nature of post-1950 economic development in the two countries.
The provincial panel data from 2005 to 2018 in this paper classifies institutional variables into the degree of market resource allocation, market openness, and property rights diversification. It ...empirically analyzes the relationship between economic growth, natural resources, and institutions quality. The research results show that the “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China. The low-quality market resource allocation system and property rights system curbed the potential advantages of natural resources to promote economic development and caused the “resource curse” effect. Similarly, the increase in market openness can ease the “resource curse” effect. Moreover, in the context of the spatial agglomeration of natural resources, there is a negative spatial correlation between economic growth, and the “resource curse” effect is more severe in areas where resources are more abundant. In addition, it is found that natural resource endowments will affect the quality of the system. Under the effect of the causal cycle mechanism, the lower the quality of the system, the more severe “resource curse” effect.
•Multi-dimensional selection institutional quality index.•The “resource curse” proposition is valid at the provincial level in China.•Negative correlation between natural resources and economic growth.•Low institutional quality leads to serious “resource curse".
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