The report summarizes first-year research of a three-year study of pathways to urban sustainability. The research team selected the STAR Communities assessment model as the backbone for its analysis. This framework offers a menu-based system for enabling city managers and leaders to build paths...

The Asia Water Development Outlook – a flagship publication by the Asian Development Bank - monitors progress in water security in the Asia Pacific region. For the first time, the 2020 edition documents financing flows that contribute to – or that are needed to enhance – water security in...

This policy brief argues in favor of a new urban model that harnesses the power that cities have to curb global warming. Such a model tackles fundamental management challenges in the energy, building and transport sectors to promote the growth of diverse and compact cities. Such a model is...

As its workforce ages and major economies shift towards producing higher value-added goods and services, New Zealand will face increasing challenges to remain globally competitive and maintain high living standards. Future growth will need to come increasingly from productivity gains, and...

Environmental disasters are thought to increase the focus on corporate sustainability in the communities where they occur. Extracting data on wildfires (a frequent type of disaster in the U.S.) and using ESG ratings and EPA air enforcement actions to construct measures of local corporate...

While the global economy continues to grow, ecosystem services tend to stagnate or decline. Economic theory has shown how such shifts in relative scarcities can be reflected in project appraisal and environmental-economic accounting, but empirical evidence has been sparse to put theory into...

It is expected that binding biophysical constraints have the potential to slow growth and impede the improvement of other key macroeconomic variables. Using a DYNK (Dynamic New Keynesian) model of the EU27, we study two different environmental policy options and evaluate their impact on...

Denmark’s green growth strategy focuses on moving the energy system away from fossil fuels and investing in green technologies, while limiting greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. On the whole, current policies should allow Denmark to reach near-term climate change targets, but may not be...

Korea, which has had the highest growth rate of greenhouse gas emissions in the OECD area since 1990, adopted an ambitious Green Growth Strategy in 2009. It aims at reducing emissions by 30% by 2020 relative to a “business as usual” scenario, implying a 4% cut from the 2005 level. The...

Domestic climate policy emissions trading schemes appear to be spreading all over the word. However, carbon markets in existence often suffer from dilution in terms of ecological effectiveness, economic efficiency, and social justice. Thus, in order to firmly base carbon markets on the main...