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Energy, Environment, Governance and public sector management, Infrastructure
Economics, Energy, Environment, Governance and public sector management, Infrastructure
Environment
Energy, Environment
Environment
Environment
Environment
Environment
The PRC’s international capacity cooperation exports both industrial capacity and financial risk
International capacity cooperation (国际产能合作guoji channeng hezuo) was a 2014 addition to the “Go Global” policy suite that the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) central bureaucracy expanded throughout 2016. It is the result of seeking a way forward from “new normal” low industrial growth rates and is a novel solution to the industrial capacity utilization problems the PRC has suffered since the 2008–2009 spending stimulus flooded into traditional industries. Steel, cement, aluminum, paper, glass, and everything from pork production to robots are in 2017 mired in cyclical overcapacity.
Pointers from Asia for urbanization in Africa
Africa and Asia are latecomers to urbanization. In these two continents, less than half live in urban centers, while elsewhere, more than 70% of people do. But Africa and Asia are now rapidly urbanizing, with Asian cities growing at an average of 1.5% per year and Africa’s at 1.1% per year.
Propelling ASEAN towards clean coal technology
Coal, the most abundant and reliable energy resource, will continue to be the dominant energy source in power generation to meet the fast-growing electricity demand in the emerging economies of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). The share of coal use in power generation was 32% in 2015, and this is projected to increase to 42% by 2040.
Electrifying emerging ASEAN through off-grid distributed renewable energy systems
Some 134 million people in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) region do not have access to electricity (IEA and ERIA, 2013). At the end of 2015, the ASEAN Community declared that the lack of power and energy access could threaten the region’s economic growth and its economic transition.
Realizing the Paris Agreement: How can Asia manage the transition to a low-carbon economy?
As the world celebrates the Paris agreement, after 20 years of fraught meetings, its significance for the future development pathways of the emerging economies of Asia cannot be underestimated. Critically, it will increase the flow of additional public and private finance for vulnerable countries for both low carbon and climate resilient investments. Low-carbon green growth pathways toward a possible 1.5°C limit and 5-year reviews will be played out through the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs).
Green investment in Asian cities: Lessons from the People’s Republic of China, Indonesia, and Japan
The concept of “green growth” has been connected to the “green economy for sustainable development and poverty reduction,” which is the first theme of the Rio+20 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD). In addition, making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable is becoming one of the 17 sustainable development goals proposed by the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals targeted to replace the United Nations Millennium Development Goals which will expire in 2015.
Window of opportunity still open on climate action
A set of reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the last of which was released on November 2, 2014, sets the scene for governments to renew their efforts on the issue through ambitious commitments for a comprehensive climate agreement in Paris in December 2015.
Time for an Asian environmental miracle?
The world is changing fast as Asia continues to surge ahead. In less than two generations, the Republic of Korea has gone from being one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest and a global leader in technology and manufacturing. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is set to become the largest economy in the world in 2014. In Viet Nam, 15-year-olds are performing above OECD average in education. Under the new leadership of India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, India will aim for the skies.
The food, water, energy nexus
Striking rates of economic growth notwithstanding, 550 million people remain hungry in the Asia and Pacific region, 65% of the population has no safe piped water, and more than 600 million people live without electricity. Overcoming these problems requires a combined approach in which food, water and energy are treated as a nexus, rather than as separate, standalone issues, which has too often been the case in the past.
Green cities: Changing the culture of waste
Asia’s drive to urbanize is taking an increasing toll on the environment with growing mountains of solid waste as city dwellers consume and discard resources at an ever increasing rate. If “green” cities are to be the answer to these environmental stresses then they will need to develop much more effective programs to reduce, reuse, recycle and recover waste.
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