Climate Change, Environment And Natural Resources

The climate change, environment and natural resources research programme looks at the role of the physical environment and natural resources in growth. It investigates the trade-off between growth and environmental protection, and attempts to set a novel agenda for stimulating low-carbon growth (e.g. by providing incentives to introduce production technologies and infrastructures that consume less carbon).

Managing natural resources including oil and mineral deposits is one policy priority. Research is also needed on how to best draw developing countries into a global system aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions. At the national level, designing optimal environmental tax and subsidy policies are likely to be a critical issue. Furthermore, the programme supports the research on how to mitigate the detriments caused by climate changes.

Harnessing Oil Revenues in Ghana
Working Paper
Authors: Rick van der Ploeg, Radoslaw Stefanski, Samuel Wills
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Improving Gujarat’s industrial pollution inspection standards
Research Project
Authors: Rohini Pande, Esther Duflo, Michael Greenstone
Sustainable development will require a way of monitoring and penalizing industrial pollution so that the firms driving the country’s future growth face private incentives aligned with social benefits. The study will test regulatory tools to better achieve this alignment.
Gold Mining and Living Standards in Ghanaian Households
Research Project
Authors: Juan Pablo Rud , Fernando M. Aragon
What is the effect of mining on living conditions of regional and local communities? Which are the main drivers of the observed effects? Ghana offers an excellent opportunity to study how the development of large-scale mining affects the economic conditions and opportunities of regional and local residents. We are interested…
Pakistan FloodMAPS
Research Project
Author: Kareen El Beyrouty
The IGC Pakistan Programme is supporting the Pakistan FloodMAPS, a flood monitoring and policy support project that arose out of the need to gather more data of the damage caused by 2010 flooding in Pakistan. The FloodMAPS project aims to bolster the capacity of Government and civil society to be…
Harnessing Oil Revenues in Ghana
Research Project
Author: Rick van der Ploeg
What are the best ways for developing countries, like Ghana, to optimally harvest large expected oil revenues? The aim of this project is to construct and calibrate a macroeconomic dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model of the Ghanaian economy with the purpose of generating optimal ways of harnessing oil revenues for…
Managing Natural Resource Rents
talk
Paul Collier delivers the opening public lecture of Growth Week on the evolving relationship between China and Africa. He is joined by Gobind Nankani (Executive Director, IGC), Alan Winters (Chief Economist, DFID) and Christopher Alden (LSE)
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Federal versus regional control: Implications for natural resources in India (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources programme)
Research Project
Author: Sheetal Sekhri
While intensive natural extraction has many short-run benefits, there is a risk that long-run costs, such as the damage to food security, may not be fully considered. One such resource is groundwater, which sustains 60% of the agriculture and provides drinking water for close to 80% of the rural population.…
Effects of Climate Change on Low-lying and Flood-prone Areas: The case of Bangladesh (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources programme)
Research Project
Author: Raymond Guiteras
Global climate change is likely to cause rising sea levels and increased frequency and severity of flooding in low-lying areas. Raymond Guiteras (University of Maryland), Richard Hornbeck (Harvard University) and Mushfiq Mobarak (Yale University) quantify the potential impacts of climate change in Bangladesh, one of the world’s most vulnerable nations.
Third-party environmental auditing (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources programme)
Research Project
Author: Rohini Pande
High levels of air pollution in urban India are associated with sharply higher mortality, and improper disposal of waste effluent can taint drinking water supplies and affect agricultural productivity. Rohini Pande (Harvard), Esther Duflo (MIT) and Michael Greenstone (MIT) consider public and private options for improving enforcement of environmental regulation…
Marketing Stoves through Social Networks to Combat Indoor Air Pollution (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources programme)
Research Project
Author: Grant Miller
Our research addresses the low uptake in developing countries of improved cookstoves, a technology which has positive health and environmental impacts by reducing indoor air pollution.
Household Clean Water Technology: Valuation, Use and Impact (Climate Change, Environment, and Natural Resources programme)
Research Project
Author: Jim Berry
Nearly one-fifth of the world's population lack access to improved sources of drinking water. In this study, Jim Berry (Cornell University), Greg Fischer (LSE) and Raymond Guiteras (University of Maryland) seek ways to obtain accurate measurement of household willingness-to-pay (WTP) for clean water technology.
The distribution of climate change across the world (Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources, and Macroeconomics programme)
Research Project
Author: John Hassler
Policy-makers increasingly agree that climate change poses a serious threat to world order. But there remains limited understanding of how the economic impact of climate change will be spread across the world, and this restricts progress on policies to mitigate the effects. John Hassler (Stockholm University), Per Krusell (Stockholm University),…