The case for scaling up mitigation efforts is urgent and has been made repeatedly in the last few years whether denominated in gigatonnes of needed reductions in greenhouse gas emissions per year or tens of 'gigadollars' of needed annual investments in zero and low carbon technologies and...

This internal background paper has been prepared to help inform the 2010 environment strategy with respect to a proposed way forward on use of country systems. The World Bank Group environment strategy is built on three pillars: leveraging natural resources for growth and poverty reduction;...

Urbanization and climate change will define much of the 21st century. Urbanization leads to improvement in standards of living, and through the increased density and service delivery efficiency of cities, higher growth can be achieved with lower greenhouse gas emissions. Cities and urban...

In this paper, authors explore the effects of uncertainty on pricing of pollution permits, through the use of a dynamic model of pollution markets. Authors consider two major sources of uncertainty - that arising from the volatility of demand for the underlying resource and that coming from the...

This note, prepared as background for the G20 submission, explores the potential for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to increase the volume of climate financing by leveraging and intermediating resources, through two main avenues: leveraging shareholder capital through the MDBs...

Carbon finance recognizes the contribution of projects to mitigating climate change. To be able to access carbon finance, projects can certify their emission reductions under a variety of standards, one of which is the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) of the United Nations Framework Convention...

The scope of the present study focuses on the assessment of opportunities to improve the effectiveness of the clean development mechanism (CDM) through the enhanced use of standardization. The study argues that the introduction of the concept of standardized baselines to the CDM can...

Norms in development are typically established at the global level to solve complex development challenges on the ground. These norms are standards of expected behavior about how things ought to be conducted and are deemed crucial for societies to flourish. Global norms, however, often fail to...