Financial Crises and Climate Change

We empirically assess by means of the local projection method, the impact of financial crises on climate change vulnerability and resilience. Using a new dataset covering 178 countries over the period 1995–2017, we observe that resilience to climate change shocks has been increasing and that advanced economies are the least vulnerable. Our econometric results suggest that financial crises (particularly systematic banking ones) tend to lead to a short-run deterioration in a country´s resilience to climate change. This effect is more pronounced in developing economies. In downturns, if an economy is hit by a financial crisis, climate change vulnerability increases. Results are robust to several sensitivity checks.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Green Governance - One Solution for two problems? Climate change and economic shocks: risk perceptions and coping strategies in China, India and Bangladesh

This collection of papers is based on an international workshop held in the summer of 2009 at the University of Duisburg-Essen. It brings together different perceptions regarding China, India and Bangladesh as they face the risks and crises of climate change and economic shocks like the recent global financial crisis. The papers reflect assumptions concerning the concept of Risk Society and discuss the extent to which Sustainable Development and the rather new concepts of Green Governance, Green Economy and the New Great Deal offer avenues for transforming risk societies into risk-avoiding and riskresistant societies and states. On the basis of these concepts, the current situation in China, India and Bangladesh is described, including the coping strategies which have been implemented so far. Contents: Tobias Debiel / Thomas Heberer: Preface - - - Anja Senz / Dieter Reinhardt: Introduction: Crisis Perception and Green Governance in Comparative Perspective: Questions, Concerns and Format of the Publication - - - Karen Shire: Risks as a Research Topic - Concepts and Methods - - - Chen Yugang: Measure for Meeting Challenges of Climate Change - a Chinese Perspective - - - Yang Long: Potential Instability Caused by the Financial Crisis - Measures Taken by the Chinese State - - - Anja Senz: Green Governance and Sustainable Development in China: Two Problems - One Solution? - - - Dinoo Anna Mathew: Climate Change in India with Special Reference to Women - - - Ash Narain Roy: Coping with Climate Change and Financial Crisis - the Indian Narrative - - - Dalem Barman: Climate Change and Security: A South Asian Perspective - - - Dil Rowshan: Anthropogenic Intervention in Natural Eco-Systems and Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh - - - Özlem Ipiv / Dieter Reinhardt: Sustainable Green Investments and Policies in Bangladesh: Two problems - One Solution? - - - Dieter Reinhardt / Anja Senz: Conclusions: Risks, the Green New Deal, and Green Governance - Lessons from South and East Asia --green governance,risk perception,climate change,financial crises,sustainable development,green new deal,green jobs,implementation,civil society,donor policies,China,India,Bangladesh

The European Union in Crisis: What Future for the EU in International Climate Policy? IES Policy Brief Issue 2016/18 • October 2016

Despite an apparently ever-growing number of crises in Europe over the past decade, the fundamental rationale of the European Union (EU) and its member states actively and jointly exerting leadership in international climate and energy policy has not changed. The members of the Union remain bound together by common policies closely linked to the single market. They also have a common interest in fighting climate change and enhancing energy security and reaping the many economic opportunities of the ‘new climate economy’. And, with individual member states being vulnerable and lacking clout, they share a strategic interest in jointly shaping evolving international climate and energy governance. The crises therefore do not call for scaling down EU climate leadership ambitions, but for adjusting the leadership strategy

String of defaults: Spanish financial crises through the years

Like many countries, Spain has gone through a series of financial crises, both before and after its industrialization. There are many underlying causes for these crises, as well as for the current Spanish downturn. It is worth noting that there are similarities between recessions throughout the history of Spain. The role of government spending, government regulation, credit institutions, budget deficits, the political climate, and international trade have been important determinants of the state of the Spanish economy, as they have been in other economies across the globe.Spain, Spanish Economy, Financial Crises, Federal Budget Deficit, Banking Crises, Subprime Mortgage, Spanish Industrial Revolution, Economic History, Political Economy, International Trade, Government Regulation

Feeling the heat: Financial crises and their impact on global climate change

This interdisciplinary paper uses world-systems analysis as a theoretical framework to argue that both the 1870s, 1930’s economic depressions reduced mean global temperatures. As global consumer demand fell, factories worldwide began producing less commodities and, as a result, emitted less greenhouse gasses. We find that in both instances there is evidence to support the hypothesis that financial crises lead to cooler temperatures.Kondratiev waves, Schumpeter, world-systems analysis, environmental economics, global climate change, Environmental Economics and Policy, Financial Economics, N22, N50, Q54,

The Global Risks Report 2016, 11th Edition

Now in its 11th edition, The Global Risks Report 2016 draws attention to ways that global risks could evolve and interact in the next decade. The year 2016 marks a forceful departure from past findings, as the risks about which the Report has been warning over the past decade are starting to manifest themselves in new, sometimes unexpected ways and harm people, institutions and economies. Warming climate is likely to raise this year's temperature to 1° Celsius above the pre-industrial era, 60 million people, equivalent to the world's 24th largest country and largest number in recent history, are forcibly displaced, and crimes in cyberspace cost the global economy an estimated US$445 billion, higher than many economies' national incomes. In this context, the Reportcalls for action to build resilience – the "resilience imperative" – and identifies practical examples of how it could be done.The Report also steps back and explores how emerging global risks and major trends, such as climate change, the rise of cyber dependence and income and wealth disparity are impacting already-strained societies by highlighting three clusters of risks as Risks in Focus. As resilience building is helped by the ability to analyse global risks from the perspective of specific stakeholders, the Report also analyses the significance of global risks to the business community at a regional and country-level

Updating New York’s Constitutional Environmental Rights

The stakes are high as New York State considers whether to amend the constitution. The electorate contemplates the gathering crises of sea level rise, disruption of weather patterns, intensified summer heat waves, and other climate change impacts. New York also faces escalating environmental problems, which the newly perceived climate impacts in turn exacerbate. It is timely to debate whether or not New York should recognize the right to the environment to its constitution. In 2016, the House of Delegates of the New York State Bar Association adopted the report of its committee on the constitution, regarding the environmental conservation article XIV. That report did not take a position on whether to expand the Constitution’s existing environmental rights to recognize a broad environmental right explicitly. A task force of the association’s section on environmental and energy law examined the issue for six months and concluded that there is merit in recognizing the right to the environment. This article introduces the emergence of this issue in its historical context

Greening Capitalism? A Marxist Critique of Carbon Markets

Climate change is increasingly being recognized as a serious threat to dominant modes of social organization, inspiring suggestions that capitalism itself needs to be transformed if we are to ‘decarbonize’ the global economy. Since the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, carbon markets have emerged as the main politico-economic tools in global efforts to address climate change. Newell and Paterson (2010) have recently claimed that the embrace of carbon markets by financial and political elites constitutes a possible first step towards the transformation of current modes of capitalist organization into a new form of greener, more sustainable ‘climate capitalism.’ In this paper, we argue that the institutionalization of carbon markets does not, in fact, represent a move towards the radical transformation of capitalism, but is better understood as the most recent expression of ongoing trends of ecological commodification and expropriation, driving familiar processes of uneven and crisis-prone development. In this paper, we review four critical Marxist concepts: metabolic rift (Foster, 1999), capitalism as world ecology (Moore, 2011a), uneven development and accumulation through dispossession (Harvey, 2003, 2006), and sub-imperialism (Marini, 1972, 1977), developing a framework for a Marxist analysis of carbon markets. Our analysis shows that carbon markets form part of a longer historical development of global capitalism and its relation to nature. Carbon markets, we argue, serve as creative new modes of accumulation, but are unlikely to transform capitalist dynamics in ways that might foster a more sustainable global economy. Our analysis also elucidates, in particular, the role that carbon markets play in exacerbating uneven development within the Global South, as elites in emerging economies leverage carbon market financing to pursue new strategies of sub-imperial expansion. </jats:p

Boom and Bust of the spanish Economy

Spain has experienced many financial crises through its history. These financial crises have varied origins. However, they do have common threads. The current recession and subsequent debt crisis follow the same pattern. The fiscal and monetary policies of the Spanish government have played a role in creating and prolonging the boom and bust cycles. Government spending, government regulation, credit institutions, budget deficits, the political climate, and international trade are discussed to illuminate the causes and effects of these business cycles. The Spanish government can take action to improve the economy and to lessen the effects of its financial crises.Spain; Spanish Economy; Financial Crises, Federal Budget Deficit, Banking Crises, Subprime Mortgage; Spanish Industrial Revolution; Economic History; Political Economy; International Trade; Government Regulation