Climate and Growth Initiative

The leading question driving funding, research, and policy in developing countries is: How can growth be achieved in the face of climate change and without generating further externalities? 

Low- and middle-income countries are both the most vulnerable to climate change and the largest drivers of future emissions growth. Given the nature and urgency of the problem, there is a pressing need for new ideas and evidence that can inform policies at scale. 

IGC brings well-developed mechanisms for linking research agendas to policy challenges and for commissioning high quality research - together with established pathways to local and global impact. 

The Climate and Growth Initiative will have three overarching objectives: 

• To enhance knowledge generation, by supporting project generation (e.g., facilitating access to data and to policy makers), building thematic researcher networks, and feeding policy challenges into our research strategy
• To strengthen knowledge uptake, by developing policy toolkits (research-informed frameworks for policy guidance), facilitating cross-country engagements to promote South-South learning, and promoting regional and global thematic convenings
• To lead engagements outside our resident team countries, enabling IGC to take key research into policy beyond our existing geographies, further increasing the scale of impact

An effective green transition in low and middle-income countries that enables them to become resilient to increasing climate risks and to reduce emissions will require substantial external financing, estimated to be around USD1 trillion per year.

Country platforms are increasingly considered the preferred solution for ensuring that climate finance is allocated in line with national development strategies and policy priorities and not donor interests. 

IGC country teams are deeply embedded in the policy landscape and are often brought into agenda setting. The IGC will: 

• Bring together the relevant domestic and international partners to support the design and implementation of a climate country platform in Tanzania
• Contribute to the development of structures to embed research and data analysis into the upstream processes of the country platform, including strategy setting and sectoral plans, and the downstream evaluation processes to assess effectiveness and impact
• Support the scaling of the pilot project by producing a policy toolkit summarising the transferable lessons from the Tanzania pilot to inform discussions in other interested IGC countries

Over 700 million people still lack access to modern forms of energy. The number of those lacking access to reliable electricity that is not plagued by power outages is far higher. 

Expanding access to energy is not only critical for economic growth. Given that many low-income countries are in hot climates, it is also an essential step for improving resilience to temperature extremes. New technologies are offering potential avenues for raising access to quality electricity. Solar is producing the cheapest electricity ever known. Yet, despite these plummeting costs, the diffusion of renewables in low- and middle-income countries is still lagging behind. 

The first pillar of this programme is on electricity market reforms. It builds on a direct engagement by LSE researchers and the IGC Pakistan country team to advise the federal Ministry of Energy on creating market opportunities for solar and wind. 

The second pillar looks at how technologies can help state utilities enhance their operations and improve quality of supply. Three ongoing projects form the basis of this programme. 

In Ethiopia, we are partnering with the utility to roll-out nearly 125,000 smart metres to industries and households. 

In Sierra Leone, building on a legacy of work on solar mini- grids, we are exploring new ways for scaling up these systems and to measure their local economic impacts. 

In Pakistan, with support from the national Ministry of Energy and the local utility, we are rolling out anti-theft cables serving hundreds of thousands of customers to examine how this technology helps the utility crack down on illegal theft.

Climate change is making the lives of the poor riskier. Heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather events are becoming more intense. Many of the world's poor have no option but to put their lives at risk in order to earn a living. Heat-related deaths are on the rise in South Asia and Africa. Excessive heat, floods and drought are destroying livelihoods, as seen in the historically unprecedented flooding in Pakistan in 2022. 

Private insurance markets are unlikely to be viable as these events represent aggregate, widespread risks and the households who need help are too poor. At the same time, governments in low-income countries face resource constraints which make large scale expansions of the social protection net challenging. Over time, migration may be the best form of adaptation – but these moves often come with their own set of risks. Building a functioning, feasible social safety net is therefore needed more than ever. 

This programme explores how social protection systems can be designed to help households cope with climate change.