COVID-19 and climate change: Challenges or opportunities for economic recovery

Authors

  • Anil Markandya Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Leioa (Spain).
  • Alexander Mueller TMG – ThinkTank for Sustainability, Berlin (Germany).
  • Jacob Salcone United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Geneva (Switzerland).
  • Simi Thambi The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) in UNEP (New Delhi, India).
  • Salman Hussain TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) (Geneva, Switzerland). 

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.12.18946

Keywords:

economics, climate change, emissions, COVID-19

Abstract

The paper reviews the impact that COVID-19 has had on the ambitions of countries to meet the Paris Accord of reducing emissions to keep global temperature increases to below 2 ºC in this century. It notes that as nations recover from the crises, if no additional measures are taken, emissions of greenhouse gases will rise again and return to their old pathway as they did after previous crises. The paper proposes actions in the short and medium terms to build back differently this time and help meet the global climate challenge.

Downloads

Download data is not yet available.

Author Biographies

Anil Markandya, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Leioa (Spain).

Resource economist. Currently he is working as a Distinguished Ikerbasque (Basque Foundation for Science) Professor at the Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3), Leioa (Spain) and Honorary Professor of Economics at the University of Bath (UK). He was a lead author for the 3rd, 4th and 5th IPCC Assessment Reports on climate change as well as the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5º . He was President of the European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics from 2014–2015. 

Alexander Mueller, TMG – ThinkTank for Sustainability, Berlin (Germany).

Managing Director of TMG – ThinkTank for Sustainability, Berlin (Germany). He served as State Secretary in the Ministry for Consumer Protection, Food and Agriculture in the Federal Republic of Germany and as Assistant–Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). From 2014 until 2018 he led the UNEP project «The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity for Agriculture and Food» (TEEBAgriFood). 

Jacob Salcone, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Geneva (Switzerland).

Natural resource economist and Program Management Officer for biodiversity and ecosystems branch of The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) in the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Geneva (Switzerland). He previously worked as a consultant to the World Conservation Monitoring Center (WCMC) and conducted ecosystem service valuation for the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). 

Simi Thambi, The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) in UNEP (New Delhi, India).

Technical Consultant for The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (TEEB) in UNEP (New Delhi, India). Prior to joining UNEP, she worked for NITI Aayog and the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change of India. She has a PhD in International Economics from Yokohama National University, Japan. 

Salman Hussain, TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) (Geneva, Switzerland). 

Head of the Ecosystem Services Economics Unit in UNEP, and global coordinator of TEEB (The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity) – a UNEP-hosted initiative (Geneva, Switzerland). Prior to joining UNEP, Salman was the Programme Director for the University of Edinburgh Masters Programme in Ecological Economics. 

References

Agrawala, S., Dussaux, D., & Monti, N. (2020). What policies for greening the crisis response and economic recovery? Lessons learned from past green stimulus measures and implications for the COVID-19 crisis. OECD Environment Working Papers, 164. https://doi.org/10.1787/c50f186f-en

Barbier, E. B. (2020) Greening the post-pandemic recovery in the G20. Environmental and Resource Economics, 76, 685–703. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10640-020-00437-w

BBC. (2020, October 5). Home working here to stay, study of businesses suggests. BBC News. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-54413214

BloombergNEF. (2020, May 13). Gridlock in Beijing as Communiter Shun Public Transport. Bloomberg NEF. https://about.bnef.com/blog/gridlock-in-beijing-as-commuters-shun-public-transport/

Blundell, R., Joyce, R., Costa Dias, M., & Xu, X. (2020, June 11). Covid-19: The impacts of the pandemic on inequality. Institute for Fiscal Studies. Retrieved October 9, 2020, from https://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/14879

Borghesi, S. (2020, April 8). COVID-19, climate policy and carbon markets. LIFE DICET project. https://lifedicetproject.eui.eu/2020/04/08/covid-19-climate-policy-and-carbon-markets/

Costa Figueira, J. (2020, June 2). Over 200 British firms urge government to align economic recovery with net zero goal. Climate Action. https://www.climateaction.org/news/over-200-british-firms-urge-government-to-align-economic-recovery-with-net

Furceri, D., Loungani, P., Ostry, J. D., & Pizzuto, P. (2020, May 8). COVID-19 will raise inequality if past pandemics are a guide. VoxEU. https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-will-raise-inequality-if-past-pandemics-are-guide

Global Carbon Project. (2020). Carbon budget 2020. An annual update of the global carbon budget and trends. https://www.globalcarbonproject.org/carbonbudget/

Global Workplace Analytics. (2020). Work-at-home after COVID-19–Our forecast. https://globalworkplaceanalytics.com/work-at-home-after-covid-19-our-forecast

Gottlieb, C., Grobovšek, J., Poschke, M., & Saltiel, F. (2020). Working from home: Implications for developing countries. In S. Djankov & U. Panizza (Eds). COVID-19 in developing economies. CEPR Press. https://voxeu.org/content/covid-19-developing-economies

Hainsch, K., Brauers, H., Burandt, T., Göke, L., Von Hirschhausen, C., Kemfert, C., Kendziorski, M., Löffler, K., Oei, P.-Y., Präger, F., & Wealer, B. (2020). Make the European Green Deal real – Combining climate neutrality and economy recovery. Deutsches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung.

Hepburn, C., O’Callaghan, B., Stern, N., Stiglitz, J., & Zenghelis, D. (2020). Will COVID-19 fiscal recovery packages accelerate or retard progress on climate change? Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 36(1), S359–S381. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxrep/graa015

IEA. (2020). The Covid-19 crisis and clean energy progress. In Tracking clean energy process. IEA. https://www.iea.org/reports/the-covid-19-crisis-and-clean-energy-progress/buildings

International Resource Panel. (2020). Building resilient societies after the COVID-19 pandemic. Key messages from the International Resource Panel. UN Environment Programme. https://www.resourcepanel.org/sites/default/files/documents/document/media/building_resilient_societies_after_the_covid-19_pandemic_-_key_messages_from_the_irp_-_12_may_2020.pdf

Le Quéré, C., Jackson, R. B., Jones, M. W., Smith, A. J. P., Abernethy, S., Andrew, R. M., De-Gol, A. J., Willis, D. R., Shan, Y., Canadell, J. G., Friedlingstein, P., Creutzig, F., & Peters, G. P. (2020a). Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement. Nature Climate Change, 10, 647–653. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-020-0797-x

Le Quéré, C., Jackson, R., Jones, M., Smith, A., Abernethy, S., Andrew, R., De-Gol, A., Shan, Y., Canadell, J., Friedlingstein, P., Creutzig, F., & Peters, G. (2020b). Supplementary data to: Le Quéré et al (2020), Temporary reduction in daily global CO2 emissions during the COVID-19 forced confinement (Version 1.3). Global Carbon Project. https://doi.org/10.18160/RQDW-BTJU

Oldekop, J. A., Horner, R., Hulme, D., Adhikari, R., Agarwal, B., Alford, M., Bakewell, O., Banks, N., Barrientos, S., Bastia, T., Bebbington, A. J., Das, U., Dimova, R., Duncombe, R., Enns, C., Fielding, D., Foster, C., Frederiksen, T., Gao, P. … Zhang, Y. (2020). COVID-19 and the case for global development. World Development, 134, 105044. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2020.105044

Stiglitz, J. (2020, 2 july). Invest in the green economy and we’ll recover from the Covid-19 crisis. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/business/2020/jul/02/invest-in-the-green-economy-and-well-recover-from-the-covid-19-crisis

Strand, J., & Toman, M. (2010). “Green stimulus”, economic recovery, and long-term sustainable development. Policy Research Working Paper; No. 5163. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/19956

United Nations Environment Programme. (2019). Emissions gap report 2019. UNEP. https://wedocs.unep.org/bitstream/handle/20.500.11822/
30797/EGR2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

World Health Organization. (2021). WHO Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) Dashboard. WHO Health Emergency Dashboard. Retrieved May 10, 2021, from https://covid19.who.int/

Downloads

Published

2022-02-02

How to Cite

Markandya, A., Mueller, A., Salcone, J., Thambi, S., & Hussain, S. (2022). COVID-19 and climate change: Challenges or opportunities for economic recovery. Metode Science Studies Journal, (12), 143–149. https://doi.org/10.7203/metode.12.18946
Metrics
Views/Downloads
  • Abstract
    1578
  • PDF
    763

Issue

The future of science (2022)

Section

Climate crisis. The crevice of the planet

License

All the documents in the OJS platform are open access and property of their respective authors.

Authors publishing in the journal agree to the following terms:

  1. Authors keep the rights and guarantee Metode Science Studies Journal the right to be the first publication of the document, licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of authorship and publication in the journal.
  2. Authors are allowed and encouraged to spread their work through electronic means using personal or institutional websites (institutional open archives, personal websites or professional and academic networks profiles) once the text has been published.

Metrics

Similar Articles

> >> 

You may also start an advanced similarity search for this article.