Climate change mitigation policies and poverty in developing countries
Climate change mitigation policies and poverty in developing countries
复制标题
发展中国家的气候变化减缓政策和贫困
DOI：
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发表时间：
2013
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
A. Golub
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Zekarias Hussein;T. Hertel;A. Golub
减轻气候变化的潜在影响是21世纪世纪的主要政策问题之一。然而，关于限制温室气体排放所需政策行动的性质、内容以及最重要的是其影响，仍存在激烈的辩论。一个促成因素是缺乏系统的证据证明减缓政策对发展中国家穷人福利的影响。在本函中，我们考虑了两种备选的政策设想，一种是只有附件一国家采取行动，第二种是在第一种政策的同时，在非附件区域采取森林固碳政策。我们使用一个经济气候政策分析框架，评估了上述政策情景对14个发展中国家7个社会经济群体的贫困影响。我们发现，仅限附件一的政策有利于消除贫困，因为它提高了非附件国家的竞争力，特别是在农业生产方面。然而，一旦非附件区域的森林固碳奖励措施被纳入一揽子政策，总体效果是增加了我们大多数抽样国家的贫困。造成这一结果的原因是，这一政策的主要影响是提高土地收益，减少农业产出和提高粮食价格。由于贫困家庭主要依靠自己的劳动力获得收入，而且通常拥有很少的土地，而且由于他们的收入中有很大一部分花在食物上，因此他们通常在收入和支出方面都受到伤害。这一结果令人不安，因为森林碳固存--特别是通过避免砍伐森林--是缓解气候变化的一个有希望的低成本选择。
Mitigation of the potential impacts of climate change is one of the leading policy concerns of the 21st century. However, there continues to be heated debate about the nature, the content and, most importantly, the impact of the policy actions needed to limit greenhouse gas emissions. One contributing factor is the lack of systematic evidence on the impact of mitigation policy on the welfare of the poor in developing countries. In this letter we consider two alternative policy scenarios, one in which only the Annex I countries take action, and the second in which the first policy is accompanied by a forest carbon sequestration policy in the non-Annex regions. Using an economic climate policy analysis framework, we assess the poverty impacts of the above policy scenarios on seven socio-economic groups in 14 developing countries. We find that the Annex-I-only policy is poverty friendly, since it enhances the competitiveness of non-Annex countries—particularly in agricultural production. However, once forest carbon sequestration incentives in the non-Annex regions are added to the policy package, the overall effect is to raise poverty in the majority of our sample countries. The reason for this outcome is that the dominant impacts of this policy are to raise returns to land, reduce agricultural output and raise food prices. Since poor households rely primarily on their own labor for income, and generally own little land, and since they also spend a large share of their income on food, they are generally hurt on both the earning and the spending fronts. This result is troubling, since forest carbon sequestration—particularly through avoided deforestation—is a promising, low cost option for climate change mitigation.