Research

March 2, 2020

BC3 publica un nuevo artículo en revista Nature Communications: “Hacia una política climática más efectiva en el comercio internacional”

La atribución de la responsabilidad de las emisiones de CO2 entre productores y consumidores es un tema controvertido en la política y la investigación del cambio climático. Se utilizan dos métodos contables principales en la literatura para determinar la contribución de los países a las emisiones globales. La contabilidad basada en la producción (PBA) mide la cantidad de CO2 liberado a la atmósfera por las industrias y los hogares de un país. La contabilidad basada en el consumo (CBA) atribuye las emisiones al consumo de productos finales del país. CBA redistribuye las emisiones de PBA y considera que las emisiones en otro país son necesarias para el consumo del país de origen. Estos dos marcos contables se utilizan para asignar la responsabilidad de las emisiones actuales de CO2. La responsabilidad de producción se dirige a los países que generan directamente las emisiones. La responsabilidad del consumidor se dirige a los países que en última instancia impulsan la presión.
February 6, 2020

VIDEO: El papel de los rumiantes en la mitigación del cambio climático. “El bueno y el malo”

Este video infográfico ha sido producido como parte de la contribución de BC3 a la COP25 en Madrid (Pabellón España-5 de diciembre de 2019) y bajo el proyecto H2020 iSAGE. El video intenta ilustrar gráficamente por qué los rumiantes no tienen la culpa del cambio climático. Se muestran diferentes argumentos con respecto a las diferencias entre las emisiones de metano biogénico de los rumiantes y el CO2 de combustibles fósiles, las diferencias en los sistemas de producción y las incertidumbres con respecto a las emisiones de N2O y la línea de referencia para comparar las emisiones de los rumiantes en comparación con otras actividades. La idea del video y el guión han sido desarrollados por Agustín del Prado (BC3) y Pablo Manzano (Universidad de Helsinki), animados y producidos por Yelena Grigorenko y voz en off de Bosco Lliso (BC3). The video attempts to graphically illustrate why ruminants are not to be blamed for climate change. Different arguments are shown regarding the differences between emissions from biogenic methane from ruminants and fossil fuel CO2, differences in production systems and the uncertainties regarding N2O emissions and the baseline of reference to compare emissions from ruminants compared with other activities. The video idea and script have been developed by Agustin del Prado (BC3) and Pablo Manzano (University Of Helsinki), animated and produced by Yelena Grigorenko and voice over by Bosco Lliso (BC3).
November 11, 2019

Modeling trade-offs across carbon sequestration, biodiversity conservation, and equity in the distribution of global REDD+ funds

The program on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) is one of the major attempts to tackle climate change mitigation in developing countries. REDD+ seeks to provide result-based incentives to promote emission reductions and increase carbon sinks in forest land while promoting other cobenefits, such as the conservation of biodiversity.
October 22, 2019

Contribution of the land sector to a 1.5 °C world

The Paris Agreement introduced an ambitious goal of limiting warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels. Here we combine a review of modelled pathways and literature on mitigation strategies, and develop a land-sector roadmap of priority measures and regions that can help to achieve the 1.5 °C temperature goal. Transforming the land sector and deploying measures in agriculture, forestry, wetlands and bioenergy could feasibly and sustainably contribute about 30%, or 15 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (GtCO2e) per year, of the global mitigation needed in 2050 to deliver on the 1.5 °C target, but it will require substantially more effort than the 2 °C target
September 19, 2019

Book chapter: Delta Economics and Sustainability

Environmental change constitutes a risk to the sustainability of economic activities, within deltas and the wider regions and economies within which they sit. Slow acting environmental change and shocks from extreme events can affect economic activities. Using multiregional input-output tables, extended to include environmental dimensions and combined with Computable General Equilibrium models, flows of economic activities and ecosystem services across supply chains are assessed.
September 18, 2019

Greener and Fairer: A Progressive Environmental Tax Reform for Spain

Environmental externalities call for the use of environmental taxes to get prices right and thereby reduce environmental pressures. To date, however, the Spanish government makes only limited use of environmental taxes. One major reason for the policy reluctance are concerns on the regressive impacts of environmental taxes. We argue that policy can hedge against these concerns by means of revenue recycling. More specifically, we assess the impacts of a green tax reform where additional revenues are redistributed lump-sum to Spanish households on an equal-per-capita basis. Based on quantitative evidence from coupled microsimulation and computable equilibrium analyses we find that such a green tax reform leads to a substantial reduction in harmful emissions while having a progressive impact.
September 16, 2019

former cientific director Anil Markandya took part this week at UNCCD COP 14

BC3 – Basque Centre for Climate Change former cientific director Anil Markandya took part this week at the fourteenth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP 14). This conference was scherduled to take place from 2-13 September 2019, at the India Expo Center and Mart in New Delhi, India.Part of the side event “Economics of land degradation: Development Alternatives, WOTR & the ELD Initiative” the Distinguished Ikerbasque Professor Markandya gave a presentation about “Economics of Land Degatation: Insights from an evaluation study in Bundelhand by Development Alternatives Group”.
August 7, 2019

Jornal Article: Dry deposition of air pollutants on trees at regional scale: A case study in the Basque Country

There is increased interest in the role of trees to reduce air pollution and thereby improve human health and well-being. This study determined the removal of air pollutants by dry deposition of trees across the Basque Country and estimated its annual economic value. A model that calculates the hourly dry deposition of NO2, O3, SO2, CO and PM10 on trees at a 1 km x 1 km resolution at a regional scale was developed.
August 5, 2019

Book: Aid Effectiveness for Environmental Sustainability

This collection examines the role that foreign aid can play in dealing with the severe global challenge of climate change, one of the most pressing international development issues of the 21st century. Addressing the key threats of rising temperatures, changes in precipitation, coastal erosion and natural disasters, the book considers the implications for policy and future research, particularly in developing countries.
June 14, 2019

BC3 participates in H2020 project to facilitate stakeholder dialogue and integrated assessment modelling with respect to the objectives of the Paris Agreement

The new EU H2020 project Paris Reinforce (Delivering On the Paris Agreement: A Demand-Driven, Integrated Assessment Modelling Approach) has kicked off with its first meeting held in Athens in the beginning of June, 2019. The project has been granted over 6.5 million € funding from the European Commission under the call for supporting the design and assessment of climate policies call of the Horizon 2020 program, with the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3) as one of the main partners of this consortium.