We study how stochasticity in the evolution of agricultural productivity interacts with economic and population growth at the global level. We use a two-sector Schumpeterian model of growth, in which a manufacturing sector produces the traditional consumption good and an agricultural sector...

The underlying research project was sponsored by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the funding programme Research for the Reduction of Land Consumption and for Sustainable Land Management (REFINA). REFINA is implemented by the BMBF in cooperation with the Federal...

In this article, Professor Kaswan argues that hoped-for greenhouse gas reductions cannot be achieved without reducing consumption. Given their control over land use and buildings, cities can play a key role in reducing consumption. She argues that, while existing federal proposals for a...

Worldwide, most global cities are located in coastal zones, but a paradox of sustainability is especially striking for American global cities. This article examines such paradox drawn between globalization-induced development and coastal ecosystems. It focuses on two developmental components...

Urban land governance is one of the central challenges not just for urban but also more broadly for global development in times of rapid urbanisation. This paper advances a fresh perspective to look at urban land by exploring to what extent it could be characterised as a resource curse problem....

Ramsar Resolution XI.17 requested the Convention’s Scientific and Technical Review Panel to report on the state of the world’s wetlands and their services to people. As a contribution to this task, this Briefing Note summarizes and highlights for Contracting Parties and other decision makers...

Tall buildings are central to facilitating sustainable urbanization and growth in cities worldwide. We estimate average elasticities of city population and built area to aggregate city building heights of 0.12 and -0.17, respectively, indicating that the largest global cities in developing...

Biodiversity can sometimes only be preserved if natural habitats are excluded from human uses. Such protection measures generate positive externalities at the global scale. This holds especially for protection in developing countries that host great parts of global biodiversity. For...

This paper provides an empirical assessment of the impact of the main driving forces underling CO2 and SO2 emissions across political regimes. Depending on the air pollutant and the political regime, the relationship between per capita GDP and emissions levels is either linear or inverted-U...

Energy leapfrogging may have critical implications for a world that seeks to reduce its fossil fuel use and greenhouse gas emissions, and in which most future economic growth will be concentrated in rapidly growing, industrializing countries rather than in more mature economies. The current...