Environment and Sustainable Development

Global warming and changes in climate will have severe and lasting impacts on national efforts to alleviate poverty and promote sustainable development. Some of the world's poorest countries and communities are the most vulnerable and are already suffering the consequences. Yet often these countries are rich in natural capital, ecosystems, and biodiversity that can contribute to solutions as they can to climate change. Biodiversity is the foundation and mainstay of agriculture, forests, and fisheries. Biological resources provide the raw materials for livelihoods, agriculture, medicines, trade, tourism, and industry. Forests, grasslands, freshwater, and marine and other natural ecosystems provide a range of services, often not recognized in national economic accounts but vital to human welfare: regulating water flows and water quality, flood control, pollination, decontamination, carbon sequestration, soil conservation, and nutrient and hydrological cycling. Current efforts to address climate change focus mainly on reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, mainly through cleaner energy strategies, and on attempting to reduce vulnerability of the communities at risk by improving infrastructure to meet new energy and water needs. This book book sets out a compelling argument for including ecosystem-based approaches to mitigation and adaptation as a third essential pillar in national strategies to address climate change. Such ecosystem-based strategies can offer cost-effective, proven and sustainable solutions contributing to, and complementing, other national and regional adaptation strategies.

This report updates previous studies that measured in economic terms the extent of biological losses attributable to overfishing globally. The new estimates assess these 'sunken billions' at $83 billion annually. The report further shows that a clear path can lead to the recovery of these considerable losses, including through significant reduction in global fishing overcapacity. A breakdown between regions is also included, showing that the effort needed to achieve this reform will not be felt equally throughout the world. While the cost of such reform will likely be high, the expected benefits include an increase in biomass by a factor of 2.7, increase in annual harvests by 13 percent, and a 30-fold increase in annual net benefits accrued to the fisheries sector (from $3 billion to $86 billion annually). This urgent call for action is reinforced by the impacts of climate change on fish stocks and fisheries worldwide.

Climate change remains a global challenge requiring international collaborative action. Another area where countries have successfully committed to a long-term multilateral resolution is the liberalization of international trade. Integration into the world economy has proven a powerful means for countries to promote economic growth, development, and poverty reduction. The broad objectives of the betterment of current and future human welfare are shared by both global trade and climate regimes. Yet both climate and trade agendas have evolved largely independently through the years, despite their mutually supporting objectives. Since global emission goals and global trade objectives are shared policy objectives of most countries, and nearly all of the World Bank's clients, it makes sense to consider the two sets of objectives together. This book is one of the first comprehensive attempts to look at the synergies between climate change and trade objectives from economic, legal, and institutional perspectives. It addresses an important policy question - how changes in trade policies and international cooperation on trade policies can help address global environmental spillovers, especially GHG emissions, and what the (potential) effects of (national) environmental policies that are aimed at global environmental problems might be for trade and investment. It explores opportunities for aligning development and energy policies in such a way that they could stimulate production, trade, and investment in cleaner technology options.

Environmentally and socially sustainable policies are essential for good governance. Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) is the key tool for integrating environmental considerations into policies, programs and plans. This book focuses on SEA applied to policies. Through lessons learned from previous use of SEA on policies, it draws lessons on the strengths and weaknesses of current SEA methodology. It then goes on to analyze how policies are formulated and implemented and proposes a new conceptual framework for conducting SEA of policies thatpotentially could be more useful in influencing decision makers to integrate environmental sustainability considerations into policy formulation and implementation.