Chapter 12: Sustainable Development and Mitigation
12.2 Implications of development choices for climate change mitigation
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12.2.3 Changing development pathway requires working with multiple actors, at multiple scales
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12.2.3.3 Civil society
Civil society refers to the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values (Rayner and Malone, 2000). In theory, its institutional forms are distinct from those of the state, family and market, although in practice, the boundaries between state, civil society, family and market are often complex, blurred and negotiated. Civil society commonly embraces a diversity of spaces, actors and institutional forms, varying in their degree of formality, autonomy and power. Civil societies are often populated by organizations such as registered charities, development non-governmental organizations, community groups, women’s organizations, faith-based organizations, professional associations, trades unions, self-help groups, social movements, business associations, coalitions and advocacy groups (Najam, 1996). As this definition emphasizes, civil society is closely related to the more recent concept of ‘social capital’. As described by Putnam (1993), social capital describes the overlapping networks of associational ties that bind a society together.
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12.2.4 Opportunities at the sectoral level to change development pathways towards lower emissions through development policies
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12.2.4.1 Energy
The implications of four broad categories of energy policies on emissions are discussed: provision of affordable energy services to the poor; liberalization; energy efficiency; and energy security. Policies that support the penetration of renewable energy - which are often introduced for non-climate reasons, but are also obvious tools for climate mitigation in the energy sector - are discussed in Section 4.5.
Access to Energy: Access to energy is critical for the provision of basic services such as lighting, cooking, refrigeration, telecommunication, education, transportation or mechanical power (Najam et al., 2003). Yet, an estimated 2.4 billion people rely on wood, charcoal or dung for cooking, and 1.6 billion are without access to electricity (IEA, 2004c). Providing access to commercial fuel and efficient stoves would have highly positive impacts on human development by reducing child mortality, improving maternal health, and freeing up time used to collect fuel wood, especially for women and girls (Najam and Cleveland, 2003; Modi et al., 2006). For example, indoor air pollution, mainly from cooking and heating from solid fuels, is responsible for 36% of all lower respiratory infections and 22% of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (WHO, 2002). See also Chapter 4 and Chapter 6. It is estimated that a shift from crop residues to LPG, kerosene, ethanol gel, or biogas could decrease indoor air pollution by approximately 95% (Smith et al., 2000). The impact on GHG emissions depends on the nature of the biomass resources and the carbon intensity of the replacement. Providing reliable access to electricity would also have highly positive impacts on human development, by providing preconditions for the development of new economic and social activities, for example, allowing for education activities at night and employment generating business initiatives (World Bank, 1994; Karekezi and Majoro, 2002; Spalding-Fecher et al., 2002; Toman and Jemelkova, 2003).
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12.3 Implications of mitigation choices for sustainable development goals
The evolution of the concept of sustainable development with emphasis on its two-way linkage to climate change mitigation is discussed in Section 12.1, and the link between the role of development paths and actors or stakeholders that could make development more sustainable by taking climate change into consideration is explored in Section 12.2.The reverse linkages are summarized in Section 12.3, and the literature on impacts of climate mitigation on attributes of sustainable development is assessed.
The sectoral chapters (Chapters 4–11) provide an overview of the impacts of the implementation of many mitigation technologies and practices that are being or may be deployed at various scales in the world. In this section, the information from the sectoral chapters is summarized and supplemented with findings from the sustainable development literature. Synergies with local sustainable development goals, conditions for their successful implementation, and trade-offs where the climate mitigation and local sustainable development may be at odds with each other are discussed (see overview Table 12.4). In addition, the implications of policy instruments on sustainable development goals are described in Section 12.3.5, with the focus on the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). As documented in the sectoral chapters, mitigation options often have positive effects on aspects of sustainability, but may not always be sustainable with respect to all three dimensions of sustainable development - economic, environmental and social. For example, removing subsidies for coal increases its price and creates unemployment of coal mine workers, independently of the actual mitigation (IPCC, 2001). In some cases, the positive effects on sustainability are more indirect, because they are the results of side-effects of reducing GHG emissions. Therefore, it is not always possible to assess the net outcome of the various effects.
The sustainable development benefits of mitigation options vary over sectors and regions. Generally, mitigation options that improve productivity of resource use, whether it is energy, water, or land, yield positive benefits across all three dimensions of sustainable development. In the agricultural sector (Table 8.8), for instance, improved management practices for rice cultivation and grazing land, and use of bioenergy and efficient cooking stoves enhance productivity, and promote social harmony and gender equality. Other categories of mitigation options have a more uncertain impact and depend on the wider socio-economic context within which the option is being implemented.
Some mitigation activities, particularly in the land use sector, have GHG benefits that may be of limited duration. A finite amount of land area is available for forestation, for instance, which limits the amount of carbon that a region can sequester. And, certain practices are carried out in rotation over years and/ or across landscapes, which too limit the equilibrium amount of carbon that can be sequestered. Thus, the incremental sustainable development gains would reach an equilibrium condition after some decades, unless the land yields biofuel that is used as a substitute for fossil fuels.
The sectoral discussion below focuses on the three aspects of sustainable development - economic, environmental, and social. Economic implications include costs and overall welfare. Sectoral costs of various mitigation policies have been widely studied and a range of cost estimates are reported for each sector at both the global and country-specific levels in the sectoral Chapters 4 to 10. Yet, mitigation costs are just one part of the broader economic impacts of sustainable development . Other impacts include growth and distribution of income, employment and availability of jobs, government fiscal budgets, and competitiveness of the economy or sector within a globalizing market.
Table 12.4: Sectoral mitigation options and sustainable development (economic, local environmental and social) considerations: synergies and trade-offs
| Sector and mitigation options |
Potential SD synergies and conditions for implementation |
Potential SD trade-offs |
Energy supply and use: Chapters 4-7
| Energy efficiency improvement in all sectors (buildings, transportation, industry, and energy supply) (Chapters 4-7) |
- Almost always cost-effective, reduces or eliminates local pollutant emissions and consequent health impacts, improves indoor comfort and reduces indoor noise levels, creates business opportunities and jobs and improves energy security -Government and industry programmes can help overcome lack of information and principal agent problems - Programmes can be implemented at all levels of government and industry
- Important to ensure that low-income household energy needs are given due consideration, and that the process and consequences of implementing mitigation options are, or the result is, gender-neutral |
-Indoor air pollution and health impacts of improving the thermal efficiency of biomass cooking stoves in developing country rural areas are uncertain |
| Fuel switching and other options in the transportation and buildings sectors (Chapters 5 and 6) |
- CO2 reduction costs may be offset by increased health benefits
- Promotion of public transport and non-motorized transport has large and consistent social benefits
- Switching from solid fuels to modern fuels for cooking and heating indoors can reduce indoor air pollution and increase free time for women in developing countries
- Institutionalizing planning systems for CO2 reduction through coordination between national and local governments is important for drawing up common strategies for sustainable transportation systems
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- Diesel engines are generally more fuelefficient than gasoline engines and thus have lower CO2 emissions, but increase particle emissions - Other measures (CNG buses, hybrid diesel-electric buses and taxi renovation) may provide little climate benefits |
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Environmental impacts include those occurring in local areas on air, water, and land, including the loss of biodiversity. Virtually all forms of energy supply and use, and land-use change activity cause some level of environmental damage. GHG emissions are often directly related to the emissions of other pollutants, either airborne, for example, sulphur dioxide from burning coal which causes local or indoor air pollution, or waterborne, for example, from leaching of nitrates from fertilizer application in intensive agriculture.
The social dimension includes issues such as gender equality, governance, equitable income distribution, housing and education opportunity, health impacts, and corruption. Most mitigation options will impact one or more of these issues, and both benefits and trade-offs are likely.
12.3.1 Energy supply and use
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12.3.1.1 Energy demand sectors – Transport, Buildings and Industry
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In developing countries, efficient cooking stoves that use clean biomass fuels are an important option. These can have significant health benefits including reduction in eye diseases. The incident is disproportionately high amongst rural women in many developing countries where fuelwood and other biomass materials are a principal source of energy (Porritt, 2005). It has also been shown, for example, that the availability of cleaner burning cookers and solar cookers in developing countries not only has important health benefits but also significant social benefit in the lives of women in particular (Dow and Dow, 1998). A move to a more reliable and cleaner fuel not only has benefits in terms of carbon emission and health, it has also the effect of freeing up significant amount of time for women and children, which can be applied to more socially beneficial activities, including going to schools in the case of children. The air pollution benefit of improved stoves, however, is controversial; other studies have noted that efficiency was improved at the expense of higher emissions of harmful pollutants (see Section 4.5.4.1).
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