Search

n recent years, there has been rapid development of the literature linking climate change and armed conflicts. Although no conclusionary evidence has been found of a direct link between climate change and armed conflicts, still climate change has been addressed as an important trigger, exacerbating underlying social, economic and institutional conditions and thus resulting in higher risk and magnitude of violent activities. In this context, while more research is needed to further disentangle how climatic changes combine with socio-economic and institutional elements to induce conflicts, an important pathway to be explored is the role that building resilience can play in preventing and/or breaking the negative relationship between climate change and violent activity. In this context, resilience refers to the capacity of a system to come back to its original conditions after a shock and relies on the combination of socioeconomic, institutional and technological dimensions. In our paper we provide empirical evidence on the role played by resilience-building investments in attenuating the emergence of armed conflicts as a consequence of climate-related anomalies and natural disasters.

L’entrata in vigore dell’Accordo di Parigi il 4 novembre del 2016 ha sancito per i paesi firmatari un radicale cambio di passo nel-la progettazione delle politiche di contenimento e riduzione delle emissioni di gas serra responsabili del cambiamento climatico.•L’Unione europea (UE), in vista della prossima scadenza al 2023 per la presentazione di una nuova strategia di mitigazione delle emissioni climalteranti, ha approvato l’11 dicembre del 2019 il piano di transizione energetica sostenibile noto come European Green Deal, con l’obiettivo ultimo di arrivare al 2050 con una completa decarbonizzazione dell’economia europea.•Il piano di mitigazione delle emissioni dell’UE, sebbene molto am-bizioso, rimane un pacchetto di interventi su scala unilaterale, che consente di ridurre i gas serra su scala globale solo del 3,4%.•I molteplici legami economici e commerciali, che a livello mondiale sono rappresentati dalla stretta integrazione dei processi produt-tivi dei diversi paesi nelle catene globali del valore, impediscono all’azione unilaterale dell’UE di trasformarsi in un’azione efficace per ridurre le emissioni globali: il carbon leakage riduce l’impatto della politica dell’UE di quasi un terzo.

A partire dagli anni Novanta le filiere agroalimentari sono diventate sempre più globali e complesse, con evidenti ripercussioni anche in termini di standard e garanzie minime necessarie per tutelare la sicurezza, la salubrità e la qualità del cibo. Al tempo stesso, si è registrata una maggiore attenzione per la sostenibilità ambientale e le relazioni che intercorrono tra cambiamento climatico e sicurezza alimentare. Scopo di questa trattazione è di discutere alcuni aspetti fondamentali che sottostanno al processo di globalizzazione del sistema agroalimentare e degli aspetti specifici legati alla sicurezza alimentare, con particolare attenzione alle misure per la gestione del rischio alimentare e per la sostenibilità ambientale introdotte dall’Unione Europea., Argomenti, N. 18 (2021): gennaio - aprile

La relazione tra commercio e cambiamento climatico è molto complessa e le interazioni tra i due fenomeni si manifestano in molteplici modi. I meccanismi sono sia diretti che indiretti e le caratteristiche globali degli impatti sul clima e le relative responsabilità incrementano le difficoltà interne al dibattito politico. A tal fine, una profonda conoscenza dei collegamenti tra settori e regioni come così come tra diversi livelli decisionali, è un prerequisito per gli esercizi di valutazione delle politiche climatiche e/o commerciali.

Trabajo presentado en la 5th Geography of innovation conference, celebrada en Stavanger (Noruega) del 29 al 31 de enero de 2020., The paper focuses on the nexus between climate change and conflicts with an empirical analysis on a panel of 2,653 georeferenced cells covering the entire African continent between 1990 and 2016. Our econometric approach based on a spatial dynamic zero-inflated negative binomial (ZINB) model yields three novel, and policy relevant, results. First, we observe temporal persistence of the effect of climate variations on the probability of conflicts over long time spans. Second, we find that the vulnerability of agricultural activities entails spatial persistence in the propensity of violence breakout. Third, local socio-economic features exacerbate the spatial propagation of conflicts.

The introduction and adoption of green technologies are considered the most cost effective way to reduce environmental pressure without compromising economic competitiveness. The scientific literature has emphasized the crucial role played by diffusion pathways of green technologies along the supply value chain, but empirical quantitative findings on the effectiveness of green technologies in improving environmental performance are scarce. The objective of this paper is to highlight the role of inter-sectoral linkages in shaping the influence played by eco-innovations on sectoral environmental performance. Empirical findings show that both the direct and indirect effects of eco-innovations help reduce environmental stress and that the strength of these impacts varies across the value chain depending on the technology adopted and the type of pollutant under scrutiny. The main implications we can deduce are that, first both corporate and policy governance strategies should specifically address the goal of maximizing environmental gains that can be achieved through the development and adoption of clean technologies along the supply chain, and second both strategies should be coordinated in order to minimize the costs for reducing environmental pressures.

Negli ultimi decenni le relazioni tra sistema economico e ambiente naturale hanno assunto sempre maggiore importanza anche alla luce delle criticità dell’attuale sistema energetico. La sostenibilità della crescita economica e la necessità di ridurre la concentrazione delle emissioni inquinanti sono, infatti, temi centrali nel dibattito internazionale, e presentano importanti ripercussioni sotto il profilo di politica energetica e climatica. Nel presente lavoro è stata svolta un’analisi empirica sull’andamento dell’efficienza energetica in termini di elasticità di sostituzione, per 29 paesi OCSE (1975-2007), con l’obiettivo di studiare il ruolo nell’energia nei processi produttivi e di presentare alcune implicazioni in termini di policy. During the last decades, the relationships between economic system and the environment have gained in importance, one reason being the peculiarity of the existing energy system. Sustainability in growth processes and the need of reducing the concentrations of polluting agents have become central themes in the international agenda and have meaningful consequences with respect to energy and climate policy. In this paper an empirical analysis on energy efficiency, in terms of substitution elasticity for 29 OECD countries (1975-2007), is presented with the purpose of studying the role of energy in production processes and analysing the related policy implications.

Economic damage from climate change includes several aspects that need to be considered at the global and regional levels to achieve an equitable common solution to global warming. The economic literature reviewed here analyzes this issue under three general perspectives. First, the analytical estimation of the linkages between damages in monetary terms and climate variables, as projections of temperature, precipitation, and frequency of extreme events, is rapidly evolving. Damage functions are included in complex economic models in order to calculate the economic impact of the climate change on economic output and growth, thus informing the debate on the amount of resources that should be devoted to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and limiting climate damages. The choice of the geographical aggregation in this respect is a crucial aspect to be considered if policy advice is to be formulated on the basis of model results. The higher the level of regional detail, the more reliable the results are in terms of geographical distribution of economic damages. Second, the precise estimation of the costs associated with different damages caused by climate change is attracting growing interest. Climate costs present a wide range of heterogeneity for several reasons, such as the different formulation of the damage function adopted, the modeling design of the economic impact, the temporal horizon considered, and the differentiation across sectors. Two broad categories of analysis are relevant. The first refers to the choice of the sectoral dimension under investigation, where some studies cover multiple sectors and their interactions, while others analyze specific sectors in depth. The second classification criterion refers to the choice of the economic aspects estimated, where a strand of literature analyzes only market-based costs, while other analyses also include non-market (or intangible) damages. The most common sectors investigated are agriculture, forestry, health, energy, coastal zones and sea level rise, extreme events, tourism, ecosystems, industry, air quality, and catastrophic damages. Most studies consider market-based costs, while non-market impacts need to be better detailed in economic models. Third, the computation of a single number through the analytical framework of the social costs of carbon (SCC) represents a key aspect of the process of adapting complex results in order to properly inform the political debate. SCC represents the marginal global damage cost of carbon emissions and can also be interpreted as the economic value of damages avoided for unitary GHG emission reduction. Several uncertainties still influence the robustness of the SCC analytical framework, such as the choice of the discount rate, which strongly influences the role of SCC in supporting or not mitigation action in the short term. Although the debate on the economic damages arising from climate change is flourishing, several aspects still need to be investigated in order to build a common consensus within the scientific community as a necessary condition to properly inform the political debate and to facilitate the achievement of a long-term equitable global climate agreement.