Impact
November 11, 2019
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
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.
June 11, 2019
The materials presented in this product seek to provide information on the Katowice Climate Package, agreed during the Katowice Climate Conference held in 2018. Specifically, it contains information on the decisions related to the modalities, procedures and guidelines for the transparency framework for action and support to facilitate understanding of the Parties’ communication and reporting obligations under the Paris Agreement, as well as the process to track progress implementation of NDC commitments. This material seeks to serve as a resource for developing countries for the update, review and communication of NDCs, as well as for the reporting and accounting of their NDC commitments.
April 5, 2019
Science should provide solutions for societal transformations toward sustainability in the face of global environmental change. Land system science, as a systemic science focused on complex socio-ecological interactions around land use and associated trade-offs and synergies, is well placed to contribute to this agenda.
