The COVID-19 pandemic has forced previously unimaginable changes in economic activity and lifestyles around the world. In an effort to slow the spread of the virus, many governments have ordered businesses—including food processing factories and restaurants—to suspend operations.

While this protects people’s health, it can also make access to income and food more precarious. The impacts of the pandemic on agriculture and fisheries sectors, key sources of nutrition and employment, are now becoming a focus for many governments.

The challenge for policy-makers is to provide the most effective support possible to preserve businesses, incomes, and food security while creating a path toward more sustainable fishing in the future. As others have already pointed out, government responses to the crisis could be harmful to the health of fish stocks and those who depend on them, so choosing our next steps wisely will be of utmost importance. 

Support that helps capital markets function will provide the greatest bang for government buck: this can bring real benefits to fishers without having a negative impact on fishing effort or capacity.

What are the options? The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations has just released a useful policy brief describing ways in which governments can support the fishing and aquaculture sectors during the pandemic. Modelling by the Organisation for Economic Development and Co-operation has identified the relative impacts of different kinds of support measures, which could help governments choose how best to support the sector within their specific context.

In the current context of COVID-19, support measures should be designed to target a particular problem a country faces regarding its fisheries.

Choose cash over fuel

Subsidies for fuel are one of the most common forms of support to fishers but also one of the most problematic, as they often benefit those selling fuel more than fishers themselves; if fishing levels aren’t well-controlled, cheaper fuel can lead to excessive fishing, depleted stocks, and reduced catch. 

Instead, the focus should be on assistance that helps capital markets to function, such as bank lending, along with support that focuses on fishers’ incomes, such as unemployment relief. These measures provide the greatest bang for government buck: they can bring real benefits to fishers without having a negative impact on fishing effort or capacity, or on marine resources.

What if the problem is a lack of demand?

Some fishers in developed economies, where the restaurant trade represented the bulk of the market, are seeing demand for fresh fish evaporate and prices plummet. While to some extent this has been balanced out by increased purchases of fish in supermarkets, prices often remain low. In this scenario, support that encourages more fishing can be doubly harmful, increasing catch beyond sustainable levels without any market for the fish to begin with. A better option here would focus on temporary support for fishers’ incomes until demand revives and value chains readjust.

What if the problem is a lack of supply?

The pandemic could affect the global supply of fish, raising its price and making it less accessible to many consumers; this could occur as a result of disruptions along the value chain, from transport to processing to retail.

In India, the absence of fish workers and basic supplies to support storage and transport, such as ice, has generated significant challenges, with some forced to throw their catch away. On the other hand, there have been small-scale fishers in Kenya seeing prices for their catch rise as imports of frozen fish have dropped.

If the challenge is meeting a supply-side shock that has raised the price of fish, a policy intervention might be most useful if it targets not the fishing sector per se but the incomes of vulnerable groups who might not be able to afford to eat fish.

Act together

For businesses that depend directly on natural resources, such as fishing, the sustainability of these resources is key to surviving. But the nature of fisheries as a shared resource means that governments’ decisions will be influenced by how others respond. The temptation to reach for interventions such as fuel subsidies, which can quickly facilitate more fishing, could push other governments with competing fleets to do the same in order to “keep up.”

In the context of the current pandemic, collective agreement on how government support should be shaped to support both economic recovery and a sustainable future for the fishing industry becomes even more important.

Governments have the chance to reach this agreement at the World Trade Organization by the end of this year. This agreement needs to set out rules that will help fishing to be sustainable in the long term. It is an immediate opportunity to ensure fisheries, and the communities that depend on them, not only recover from this crisis but are better prepared for what lies ahead.

Sylvia Ostry, who passed away on May 7, 2020, at the age of 92, was surely one of the great international Canadians of her generation.

A leading economist and public servant, she was the Chief Statistician at Statistics Canada from 1972 to 1975, then became Deputy Minister of Consumer and Corporate Affairs (the first female deputy minister at the federal level). Prominent roles followed at the Economic Council of Canada and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. More recently, she served as Chancellor of the University of Waterloo, followed by a stint as Chair of the University of Toronto's Centre for International Studies.

On top of her professional accomplishments, Sylvia was awarded 18 honorary doctorates from universities around the world. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees launched a lecture series in her honour.

Less well known is that Sylvia had a particular affection for IISD. Born in Winnipeg, MB, she was proud that such an eminent worldwide institution should be based in her home province of Manitoba but, more importantly, she saw in IISD an organization prepared to take risks in pursuit of its mission, defy the status quo, and challenge accepted wisdom.

Sylvia saw in IISD an organization prepared to take risks in pursuit of its mission, defy the status quo, and challenge accepted wisdom.

Sylvia was delighted when IISD challenged the World Trade Organization (WTO) to live up to its commitment to ensuring that trade serves sustainable development. She was intolerant of ill-considered policy with no convincing economic or social purpose that only rewarded individual politicians.

Early on, IISD decided to examine the impact of subsidies on sustainable development. Initial findings were alarming: many subsidies are clumsy economic policy tools that too often undermine rather than advance sustainable development. We resolved to test the waters with a first phase of work on biofuel subsidies, then launch an initiative on fossil fuel subsidy reform. Early efforts to gather support were discouraging, and we considered throwing in the towel. 

During a long walk around the grounds of the WTO, after listening to IISD President David Runnalls and myself bleakly conclude that we couldn’t make it work, Sylvia stopped and asked point-blank: “How can an institute dedicated to sustainable development not address subsidies?”

She was right, and the result was IISD’s flagship Global Subsidies Initiative, for which Sylvia later chaired the Senior Advisory Council. Her impish humour and her maverick’s healthy disrespect for established power set the tone for the initiative, guiding it through the first shoals and out into open water. 

She also pounded home the importance of unimpeachable data and robust analysis. Challenging subsidies would make IISD many enemies and opponents’ first line of attack would be to discredit us by suggesting our analyses were incomplete or out of date and that our data were flawed. Any thread left hanging would be used to unravel the entire fabric, Sylvia cautioned. This advice served IISD well, not only in its controversial work on biofuel subsidies but more generally in all our work on sustainable development. After all, in the end, sustainable development is a challenge to the status quo and no thanks are to be expected from those who benefit from unsustainable behaviour.

She taught us that, if there is no precedent for doing something or approaching things in a particular way, the best thing to do is set that precedent. 

IISD owes a debt of gratitude to this great child of Manitoba. She represented the spirit IISD tries to bring to its work. She taught us that no idea is stronger than the analytic base on which it rests. She taught us that, if there is no precedent for doing something or approaching things in a particular way, the best thing to do is set that precedent. 

And, perhaps most importantly, she taught us not to take ourselves too seriously. Humour, disruption, questioning of authority, innovation, and creativity are all part of the magic mix that makes for a successful professional and institutional life, all of which she so fully embodied.

IISD’s latest Global Market Report focuses on one of the world’s most controversial crops: palm oil. The report examines sustainable production and consumption trends in the sector, specifically the use and impact of voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs). Cristina Larrea, one of the report’s authors, answers some of our questions about it.

How sustainable is palm oil?

Not very. It has become synonymous with deforestation and biodiversity loss. Large tracts of tropical forests and peatlands have been converted into palm oil plantations, affecting about 200 threatened species and releasing significant stores of carbon. More than half of the deforestation on the island of Borneo, Indonesia, was reportedly linked to this commodity between 2005 and 2015. Consequently, it's facing consumer boycotts in some markets, and the European Union has resolved to cut palm oil imports for biofuels by 2030 over environmental concerns.

With a track record like that, why do we need palm oil?

Today, it is the most consumed edible oil in the world. It can support food security, poverty reduction, and economic growth; plus, it’s nutritious, versatile, and shelf-stable. As a crop, it's remarkably productive, five to 10 times that of other vegetable oil crops. One estimate showed that palm oil accounted for 39% of global vegetable oil while occupying just 7% of land dedicated to oil vegetable crops in 2014. However, its monoculture is clearly responsible for major negative impacts on our planet, and we can’t afford this.  

How can voluntary sustainability standards (VSSs) mitigate environmental destruction and biodiversity loss in the palm oil sector?

VSSs encourage producers to follow more responsible practices, such as protecting high-conservation-value and high-carbon-stock forests, as well as rare, threatened, and endangered species. The good news is that producers are increasingly using sustainability standards. Our report found VSS-compliant palm oil production had a 110% compound annual growth rate between 2008 and 2016 to make up at least 17.4% of global production. These standards can limit some of the worst environmental impacts but will not completely prevent deforestation and related habitat loss.

Which standards are most effective?

From an environmental stewardship perspective, reports have shown the most robust standards are the International Sustainability and Carbon Certification (ISCC) and the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO). The latter is the most widely used standard, and it certified more than 50 million tonnes of palm oil in 2016.

How are these standards enforced?

Enforcement capacity remains difficult in the sector. Some VSS-certified producers have reportedly continued land grabbing and clearing forests outside their concessions. VSSs are increasingly adopting a continuous improvement approach and incorporating new technologies to help strengthen their criteria and enforcement. For instance, satellite-based sensor technology is now used to monitor illegal logging in palm oil operations. Increasing collaboration between governments and buyers also shows the potential to strengthen standards enforcement.

Do consumers care about certification?

It depends. Europe and the United States are driving demand for certification, largely via corporate sourcing commitments that are meant to help manage supply chains, reputational risk, and compliance with regulations. But on a global scale, supply is outstripping demand, with only half of the RSPO-certified palm oil sold as such in 2018. It is critical to grow demand for VSS-compliant palm oil in Asia. India and China, which consume the most of this product, have committed to raising VSS-compliant sourcing of it to 30% and 10%, respectively, by 2020.

Can palm oil ever be sustainable?

It is hard to imagine it as a fully sustainable industry. Such a transformation would require a massive effort from all stakeholders, including consumers, producers, investors, governments, and international organizations. But palm oil production and consumption will continue for the foreseeable future, so we need to use all the tools available to mitigate the damage, including VSSs.

Both the tariffs that countries impose on imports of physical things—from live horses to antique statues of horses—and the statistics on such trade are based on a set of around 5,400 six-digit numerical codes generated by the World Customs Organization (WCO) that comprise the Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, or HS for short.

Every five or so years, the WCO’s HS Review Sub-Committee (RSC) of the Harmonized System Committee (HSC), which includes representatives of each of the Organization’s 158 Contracting Parties—still with me?—reviews the HS and issues amendments intended to maintain its relevance to the constantly evolving nature of world merchandise trade. Many of these changes assign codes to new product streams, but some are intended to enable customs authorities and regulators to better address environmental and social issues.

Each successive version of the HS is known by the year in which it first started to be applied. The latest amendments to the HS were released at the end of January this year and will go into effect on January 1, 2022, as part of HS 2022.

In Code Shift: The Environmental Significance of the 2022 Amendments to the Harmonized System, I examine the specific amendments that will soon enable customs officials, as well as trade negotiators, to more effectively address environmental issues. Many of the amendments introduce codes for specific chemicals or waste products, to allow regulators to monitor the cross-border flow of specific substances or goods that are potentially hazardous to the environment. But there are also a couple of dozen amendments that should allow for more precise targeting of so-called environmental goods for the purposes of tariff reductions or elimination, which is where things get exciting.

The “specificity problem” of environmental goods in trade

The term “environmental goods” is not very precise and the universe of products that qualify as such continues to grow and evolve over time. More than 20 years ago, for the purpose of tracking trade in such goods, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the European Union’s statistical office, Eurostat, produced a serviceable definition: environmental goods are those that are used “to measure, prevent, limit, minimize or correct environmental damage to water, air and soil, as well as problems related to waste, noise and eco-systems, [including] cleaner technologies … that reduce environmental risk and minimize pollution and resource use.” It sounds specific at first glance, but it is open to different interpretations, and as technologies evolve, so do notions as to which ones should be added and which dropped.

Since the first attempt in the late 1990s by the 21-member Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) to reduce import tariffs on environmental goods, those nominated for tariff reductions have, in all cases, been drawn up with reference to the HS. A persistent irritant has been that few of the HS’s six-digit subheadings—the most granular level of codes—cover goods that are mainly used for environmental purposes.

The case of solar panels

For example, in all the previous attempts to negotiate a multilateral (i.e., including all members of the World Trade Organization) or plurilateral (involving a sub-set of WTO members) agreement on environmental goods, a technology included on all the lists has been solar photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules. These are the semiconductor devices that, when assembled into flat panels, are increasingly being deployed across the world to generate electricity cleanly.

PV cells and modules are classified under the HS subheading 8541.40—but so are other photosensitive semiconductor devices and light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which are themselves considered by many to be environmentally preferable to other light sources because of their low energy consumption per lumen. Combined, world trade in goods classified under HS 8541.40 has averaged around USD 55 billion annually since 2010, making it the 48th leading product category (out of 5,386) in 2018.

These new subheadings will make easier the task of trade negotiators, especially those who are in the process of nominating specific environmental goods for tariff elimination as part of the six-nation Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability

To get around the “specificity” problem, trade negotiators have had to name the product, the subheading under which it is classified, and then tag it with the phrase “ex out,” leaving it up to each economy to create a specific code for that commodity at the 8- or 10-digit level in their national tariff schedules, which are not internationally harmonized beyond the first six digits. Having a technology specifically described and coded in the HS makes the negotiation process easier and quicker—in contrast with the situation with ex-outs, in which participants at the start of the negotiations may have slightly different descriptions in their national tariff schedules and must therefore negotiate a commonly agreed description.

The amendments to the HS for 2022 will finally assign separate six-digit codes to PV cells that are assembled in modules or made into panels (8541.43), or not (8541.42), as well as to LEDs (8541.41). In addition, they create distinct subheadings for PV electric generators and solar water heaters. Several kinds of lighting that incorporate LEDs, including even “Lighting strings used for Christmas trees,” will also benefit from new subheadings.

Several types of electric and hybrid-electric motor cars and motorcycles were first separately identified in the revisions that produced the current (2017) HS. HS 2022 creates several more categories, including fully or partially electrified “road tractors for semi-trailers” (i.e., the “big rigs” that pull trailers laden with goods) under heading 87.01 and non-articulated trucks or lorries used for transporting goods under heading 87.04.

Other environmental goods that will be separately classified in HS 2022 include catalytic converters and particulate filters for purifying or filtering exhaust gases from internal combustion engines (both under subheading 8421.32); various furnaces and ovens that are often used for treating waste products or pollutants (heading 85.14); and mass spectrometers, which are used extensively in environmental monitoring, for example, to detect toxins and identify trace contaminants in food, water, or soil (9027.81).

Tackling climate change by eliminating tariffs

These new subheadings will make easier the task of trade negotiators, especially those who are in the process of nominating specific environmental goods for tariff elimination as part of the six-nation Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS). Eliminating tariffs on environmental goods, especially those important for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, should be one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways for countries to address climate change.

The HS revisions will also facilitate the collection of statistics, and in turn the analysis of trade, on a wider range of goods of environmental significance. Of course, these statistics will not even start to become available for the whole world until well into 2023, and then only for the year 2022. But it’s a start.

Eliminating tariffs on environmental goods, especially those important for reducing carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, should be one of the easiest and most cost-effective ways for countries to address climate change.

Soon the RSC will begin anew considering what amendments to the HS may need to be made when a new version of the HS starts to be applied in the year 2027. It is therefore not too early to start thinking about what additional environmental goods could be assigned their own subheadings in the next HS version. In Code Shift, I suggest a number of candidate goods, including:

• Silicon semiconductor wafers for photovoltaic cells
• Wind-powered and solar-powered water pumps
• Pollution-control devices for treating flue gases—specifically, electrostatic precipitators, bag filters, cyclone filtering devices, flue-gas desulphurization devices, and flue-gas denitration devices
• Ground-source heat pumps and hydrothermal heat pumps
• Electrolyzers (for generating hydrogen gas from water)
• Fuel cells
• Electric-powered and hybrid-electric aircraft
• Electric-powered and hybrid-electric ships, boats, barges, ferries, and similar vessels.

These are just a small sample of products for which greater resolution in the HS would help policy-makers, market analysts, and participants in the environmental goods and services industries better understand and more quickly identify emerging trends in trade of some of the most important goods for protecting the environment and using resources more efficiently.

To meet climate goals and avoid further market chaos, governments need to plan the decline of coal, oil and gas production, with support for workers.

Last year, we joined dozens of researchers to release a report that found countries around the world are planning to produce far more oil, gas, and coal than compatible with climate goals.

Little did we or anyone else expect that, just four months after that first Production Gap Report, major oil-producing regions would be reeling from the consequences of over-investment in and over-dependence on fossil fuels, exposed by a virus that has wreaked havoc across sectors and livelihoods.

Of course, our report did not predict a pandemic.

The risks we examined were of a different, more predictable, and less immediate nature. We looked ahead to 2030 and found that governments’ zeal to extract every possible drop of oil, lump of coal, and cubic meter of gas could lead to twice the levels of fossil fuels than would be consistent with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C limit on warming.

Now, the tide has turned. Calls to “keep oil in the ground” are typically a mainstay of environment and human rights activists. Now this message has seeped into some of the world’s most conservative institutions, even if for different reasons, amounts, and timescales.

In an effort to stabilise the market, members of Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and their allies agreed to unprecedented production cuts last month. Even this could not prevent the price of oil dropping, a few days later, to below zero dollars for the first time ever.

This historic moment is largely the consequence of the drop in oil demand due to COVID-19-related lockdowns. But it certainly didn’t help that up until recently, many fossil fuel producing countries were angling to boost output and increase market shares.

Our research put specific numbers on the scale of the problem, finding that by 2030, governments are planning to extract 60% more oil, 70% more gas, and 280% more coal than would be consistent with a 1.5°C pathway.

This is not a trajectory we can go back to.

If the world is to recover better from the pandemic, we must avoid a scenario where efforts to overcome one crisis lock us into another. That is why this year’s Production Gap Report will examine how government bailouts, stimulus measures and strategies are delaying—or accelerating—the transition away from dependence on fossil fuel production.

In the immediate future, the key priority is to support vulnerable groups around the world, including fossil fuel workers, who face significant hardships as the economy suffers and jobs are lost. Even at this stage, it’s possible to support both fossil fuel workers and the environment, as Canada’s recently announced programme to clean up orphaned and abandoned oil and gas wells demonstrates.

But we can’t stop there. We also need to address our longer-term future. Unabated extraction is incompatible with a safe climate—as is government support that props up an industry that needs to be winding down.

As governments marshal stimulus funds, bail out industries and nationalise stranded assets, they should make their support to industry conditional on diversification beyond fossil fuels. Now is also the time to invest in green industry and clean energy, to ensure the long-term viability of communities that currently rely on fossil fuels.

Reforms to subsidies for coal, oil, and gas consumption—which amounted to at least $400 billion in 2018—are also overdue. The present moment represents an opportunity to drop subsidies for consumers in particular, with oil and gas prices at record lows.

Moreover, there is an opening for countries to increase taxes on oil and gas consumption to mobilise funds for the COVID-19 crisis response, as India and Costa Rica have already done.

As they emerge from the COVID-19 crisis, countries need to pursue equitable transitions away from fossil fuels—ones that do not echo the chaos and volatility of recent energy market behaviour.

This means social dialogue and inclusive just transition planning processes that ensure the needs of workers and communities are met, that alternative livelihoods are made available, and that those affected by change are not left behind.

Multilateral and bilateral cooperation is also of paramount importance, including support for countries with fewer resources to achieve a just transition.

At this crucial time in history, the world finds itself at crossroads. The path towards a safer, greener and more resilient future involves a just and planned wind-down of fossil fuels.

This article was originally published in Climate Home News and has been re-posted with permission.

​It’s been two months since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic. In this short time, several things have become clear: 1) this pandemic has exposed and amplified the structural inequalities and inefficiencies that make our societies fragile; 2) recovering from its impacts will require swift and massive investments; and 3) if we want to come out of this stronger, such investments need to be green, fair, and resilient to a range of shocks and stresses.

Investments also must be identified and deployed quickly—especially in low- and middle-income countries, as we’re dealing with a crisis that is expected to increase global poverty for the first time in 30 years. We’re seeing recommendations from top economists and specialized task forces for designing relief and recovery packages that simultaneously address the social and economic fallout of the pandemic and the ongoing challenges of climate change, social exclusion, food insecurity, and biodiversity loss. But translating these into meaningful action relies on aligning them with national contexts and priorities.

Taking cues from National Adaptation Plans

This is where vehicles such as NAPs and adaptation planning processes can help. Through them, governments have already invested considerable amounts of time and effort to crystallize their medium- and long-term priorities for becoming more climate resilient. Though focused on climate change, these NAPs offer important assessments of the risks a country faces and can be valuable in devising more comprehensive pandemic response strategies. Since climate change interacts with so many aspects of our societies, economies, and ecosystems, preparing for its impacts often involves addressing multiple development objectives, including health. What’s more, NAPs are country-owned, informed by the best-available science, and address the needs of the most vulnerable communities and places—all valuable for informing crisis relief and recovery efforts.

Since climate change interacts with so many aspects of our lives, preparing for its impacts often involves addressing multiple development objectives, including health. What’s more, NAPs are country-owned, informed by the best-available science, and address the needs of the most vulnerable communities and places—all valuable for informing crisis relief and recovery efforts.

While meant to focus on medium- and long-term priorities, NAPs can provide entry points for immediate action. First, they can identify particularly vulnerable places and populations—those that are disproportionately affected by shocks and stresses, hardest to reach, and too often left behind. Second, they can point to existing mechanisms for delivering support to vulnerable communities. Kenya’s NAP mentions its Hunger Safety Net Programme, and Ethiopia’s NAP mentions its Productive Safety Net Program. These programs, important to building the climate resilience of the poorest and most marginalized, may also provide an architecture for delivering relief during a pandemic. Third, NAPs engage and coordinate actors already working on risk management who could help inform relief efforts. Malawi’s NAP “core team,” for example, has experts from health, environmental affairs, finance, and disaster management, among other agencies. They should be involved in devising sustainable relief efforts.

Looking beyond immediate relief and toward longer-term recovery, NAPs can provide a roadmap for action. Take the example of Fiji. While the country seems to have contained the spread of COVID-19, its economy is expected to shrink by almost 5% this year due to travel restrictions. Tourism—responsible for almost 40% of the country’s GDP—has ground to a halt. On top of this, climate impacts haven’t relented: in early April, Cyclone Harold slammed onto its shores, destroying buildings and flooding towns. This country needs investments that help address both types of shocks.

A closer look at three aspects within Fiji’s NAP—it bears mentioning these aspects are often cited in COVID-19 recovery strategies—reveals the myriad benefits in adaptation solutions. For its health sector, Fiji’s NAP prioritizes actions to make health infrastructure more disaster resilient, boost diagnostic capacities, and train healthcare workers in disaster medicine. These are investments that would leave the nation’s health system better able to deal with the next crisis, whether climate-related or not. Fiji’s NAP also outlines ways to reinforce its food system by implementing any number of its 23 priorities related to food and nutrition security, such as encouraging agronomy practices, climate-based crop planning, and building more resilient seed and food storage facilities. And in terms of infrastructure—often a central piece of economic recovery packages—we see investment priorities highlighted throughout the NAP across sectors; these will be climate-informed and involve a mix of hard and natural infrastructure, addressing many development objectives.

Adaptation planning can be essential to building national systems that prepare a country for dealing with the next crisis, whether it be a viral outbreak or a cyclone.

Fiji’s national adaptation plan is just one example. Other countries have similar "no-regrets" actions in their NAPs that should be included in pandemic recovery strategies—such as improving health surveillance systems in Saint Lucia, micro-irrigation schemes in Togo, forest restoration in Guatemala, or climate-resilient school retrofits in Kiribati. The actions listed in these plans are not wishful thinking. They offer a basis for action and important parameters—including time frames and budgets—for getting sustainable and resilient recovery off the ground.

Looking beyond the plans and engaging with the planning process

While NAPs aren’t the only documents that can inform recovery, we shouldn’t only look at documents anyway. In the case of adaptation plans, they are underpinned by a larger process that works to change how countries plan their economies and support their citizens. According to the United Nations, over 120 developing countries have launched these processes and established structures for bringing together actors from within and outside of government to assess and prioritize climate risks, and design and implement risk management solutions. The systems being established as part of this effort should be integrated into broader whole-of-government responses to the pandemic. For example, Colombia’s National Climate Change System (SISCLIMA) provides a useful framework for collaboration across sectors and levels of government for pandemic recovery.

Adaptation planning processes are also tackling complex issues of gender and social inclusion, ensuring that different social groups are reflected in adaption actions and benefits are shared equitably. Peru’s Indigenous Platform, for example, is a legally mandated mechanism for the country’s Indigenous Peoples to articulate their priorities, as well as share their knowledge and practices, to inform national climate action. The platform may provide a useful basis for identifying climate-friendly recovery actions that address the needs and capacities of these populations across the country.

The current pandemic has brought to light many weaknesses in how we respond to severe shocks and stresses. As we recover from its effects, let’s not mortgage our future by simply recreating the conditions that led to this crisis in the first place or by overlooking the challenges that will shape future crises. Investing in actions that countries have prioritized in their national adaptation plans can be essential to building national systems that prepare a country for dealing with the next crisis, whether it be a viral outbreak or a cyclone

Learn more about National Adaptation Plans and the NAP Global Network here.

Like its G20 peers, the Government of Canada has swiftly implemented significant relief measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The initial wave of rescue spending has, as it rightly should, focused on keeping businesses and people alive.

Decision-makers in Ottawa have made smart decisions already, choosing to invest in environmental clean-up and emission reduction projects that put people to work while having a positive impact on the environment.

But what happens next, in the recovery phase of stimulus spending, could either lock us into a system from which there is no escape or set us on a path toward net-zero emissions and even greater economic growth, a finding reinforced by a new report released today.

A new study finds that "recovery packages that seek synergies between climate and economic goals have better prospects for increasing national wealth."

The study, released by leading economists including Nobel Prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and acclaimed climate economist Nicholas Stern, finds that “recovery packages that seek synergies between climate and economic goals have better prospects for increasing national wealth.”

Building back better makes economic sense

The researchers catalogued over 700 stimulus policies into groups and completed a survey of 231 experts from more than 50 countries, including senior officials from finance ministries and central banks. Based on the survey results as well as lessons from the 2008 financial crisis, the economists found that “green projects create more jobs, deliver higher short-term returns per dollar spend and lead to increased long-term cost savings, by comparison with traditional fiscal stimulus.”

The report zeroes in on five policies that can have a large return on investment, be enacted quickly, and have a strongly positive impact on climate. These are:

• Investment in renewable energy production, such as wind or solar
• Building efficiency retrofit spending
• Clean research and development spending
• Natural capital investment for ecosystem resilience and regeneration
• Investment in education and training to address immediate unemployment from COVID-19 alongside unemployment from decarbonization.

For Canada, these findings are especially relevant, given the collapse in oil prices and the pressure from industry groups to loosen requirements on federal infrastructure spending. But as today’s report shows, a smarter economic recovery is one that delivers both immediate and long-term economic and environmental benefits.

Today’s report underscores the fact that governments can tackle the global economic shock of COVID-19 while simultaneously addressing climate change. 

In addition to the substantially higher job-creation effects of investing in green infrastructure and renewable energy, the report notes that green economic recovery investments have stronger longer-term economic multiplier effects, notably in investing in high-productivity economies of the future.

Today’s report underscores the fact that governments can tackle the global economic shock of COVID-19 while simultaneously addressing climate change. It reinforces the recent economic advice of the International Monetary Fund that all governments should embrace a green economic recovery, as well as yesterday's statement by financial institutions about keeping a razor-sharp focus on scaling up investments in low- and zero-carbon pathways.    

The choices we make now can set the course for a more prosperous and sustainable future. That choice is ours, Canada.

With the global economy reeling from COVID-related measures, the world now faces the risk of another dramatic rise in hunger, barely 12 years after the devastating food price crisis of 2007–2008. 

As societies prepare themselves for the next steps in this pandemic, it makes sense to ask what can be learned from the past and how we can do better.

The 2007­–2008 food price crisis was the worst shock to food markets since the early 1970s. Soon after the rise in food commodity prices, the 2008 global financial crisis created a sharp economic recession. These events caused hunger rates to soar.

The hunger crisis then... and now

The hunger crisis now emerging differs both in its origins and its spread. The high and volatile food prices of 2007—2008 and resulting hunger spike was caused by poor harvests in major food exporters, low global stocks, surging energy prices, and an unexpected jump in demand caused by biofuel subsidies.

In contrast, the COVID-19 pandemic occurred at a moment when global food stocks are plentiful, harvests are expected to be large, and energy prices—particularly oil prices—are in free fall. Meanwhile, demand has been decimated by an economic freeze.  

The measures put in place to slow the spread of the virus, while essential, have caused billions of people to lose their income. The widely predicted economic recession could last for years. For those employed in the informal sector—in other words, for most people already living in poverty in low- and middle-income countries—little or no formal support is likely to be forthcoming.

The International Food Policy Research Institute estimates that an extra 148 million people will fall into extreme poverty if the global economy shrinks by 5% this year. It is this population’s access to food that most urgently needs to be protected. 

An extra 148 million people will fall into extreme poverty if the global economy shrinks by 5% this year. It is this population’s access to food that most urgently needs to be protected. 

If loss of access to food is the biggest driver of immediate concern to food security during the pandemic, other threats are not far behind. Instability has shaken local, regional, and international supply chains. Locally, many places have seen panic purchases and empty shelves, coupled with significant waste due to abrupt market closures. In many places, farmers have been cut off from both their fields and their local markets due to physical distancing measures. 

Other choke points have emerged at distribution and food processing centres where workers have gotten sick, at borders and ports where paperwork has increased and new protocols have been imposed, and at airports where grounded flights are no longer available to carry fresh produce to import markets. In richer countries, highly specialized food value chains suffered enormous losses and waste because their market in the foodservice sector shut overnight.

Both differences and similarities can offer important lessons

The differences between the two crises matter, but so do the commonalities. The panicked responses of markets and governments, while familiar, are also largely avoidable. For example, an increasing number of countries have enacted or are considering export restrictions, something that happened a lot in 2007–2008. The action destabilizes markets, provokes wealthier food importers into panic purchases, and punishes the poorest importing countries with higher prices.

Instead, several responses developed out of the 2007–2008 experience offer positive examples for today’s policy -makers. These include:
 

• Extensive and innovative use of social protection programs, especially those that take into account gender-based differences.
   
• The G20’s Agricultural Market Information System (AMIS), housed at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and charged with ensuring transparency and supply forecasting capacity for major cereal crops globally. 
   
• The revamped UN Committee on World Food Security, which provides a forum for food security debate and negotiation by engaging governments, civil society, philanthropic organizations, and the private sector. 
   
• Financial instruments that provide a voice in their decision-making to the communities affected by international financial project funding, such as the Global Agricultural Food Security Programme (GAFSP), whose funding is up for renewal in June.
   

These measures have had a significant positive effect on strengthening food systems and facilitating global coordination and action. Their demonstrated worth is highly relevant in this new crisis. Although export bans and restrictions have emerged, so far, they remain relatively limited. Many governments have also moved quickly to adapt and extend social protection programs, such as cash transfers, to keep money in people’s pockets. 

Food security is realized when people are free from the fear of hunger, not just free from immediate need. A recent poll of 12 countries in sub-Saharan Africa shows that 80% of responders reported they had worried about not having enough to eat in the past seven days. To protect food security, we need to protect the next harvest, as well as the storage, processing, and distribution systems to bring that harvest to consumers. The climate crisis was already confronting us with the fact that dramatic change to our lives and work was coming, ready or not. The pandemic is a powerful taste of just how much change can happen in a very short time, with impacts that will extend for years.

Governments coordinated their actions in the aftermath of the 2007–2008 crisis and built institutions that have proven their worth. Facing urgent human need and equipped with unprecedented sums of public money, it is time to do more. Three principles should guide public action: redistribution that protects everyone’s access to a healthy diet; risk management that rebalances efficiency with greater diversity in food value chains; and smarter use of technology and knowledge to limit the harm food causes the environment and instead enhance its contribution to a healthy planet. This is how we can ensure public investment goes toward "building back better."

In their COVID-19 responses, Canadian leaders at all levels of government are making public commitments to protect and prioritize vulnerable groups during the pandemic.

Many are being praised for pledges that are both compassionate and—considering how coronavirus spreads—bluntly practical. At the same time, it’s hard to know exactly how they’re doing, with pandemic data on race, gender, and income largely hidden. That’s a huge problem since Canada is only as resilient to a pandemic as its least resilient people.

Some prominent voices—the Prime Minister, Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante, a major union—have landed on a particular promise to “leave no one behind” (“ne laisser personne pour compte”). The phrase has stirring battlefield allusions but also forms a pillar in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, which Canada and all United Nations member states adopted in 2015 as a blueprint to build a more just, sustainable world.

There are early wins in our country’s pandemic response that seem to match this vision. Compared with other developed countries, Canada has done relatively well in limiting the spread of coronavirus. Combined with economic relief that’s flowed more rapidly and generously than expected—and contrasted by the chaos of the American response—early polls understandably show Canadians pleased with how Prime Minister Trudeau and the premiers have handled the crisis.

The federal government’s best-known action—the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit of $2,000 per month for four months for those laid off by the Great Shutdown—has been widely praised for keeping the vast number of Canadians who barely break even each month from coming closer to losing their shelter. Weekly, the federal government includes new provisions for the CERB to support students who lost their summer jobs, musicians, and artists, offering a glimpse of how Universal Basic Income could take shape in Canada.

Special funding for First Nations, Metis and Inuit communities acknowledges the varied needs of different groups of Indigenous Peoples, while the Prime Minister’s early support of women’s organizations signals an awareness that isolating at home could lead to increased cases of domestic violence, demonstrating an understanding of the gendered impacts of social distancing. Provincial governments sequestered long-term care facilities to protect their immunocompromised residents. Some cities have used emergency measures to open hotel rooms to people experiencing homelessness.

But these actions aren’t reaching everyone equally and often carry unintended consequences. Isolation—the main weapon in our efforts to flatten the curve—is a double-edged sword. People living in long-term care homes are more completely at the mercy of an overstretched, underfunded system than ever before, with sometimes disastrous results. Canadians with disabilities are going without the support workers and programs that make life manageable, while support has not yet reached some women’s shelters whose bed space has been reduced for social distancing needs. Meanwhile, some advocates for people experiencing homelessness say the emergency shelters being newly offered fall far short of the need.

This is on top of a disease that spreads along fault lines of inequality; that threatens a healthcare workforce that’s predominantly female; that spreads easiest to transient people without easy access to handwashing; that holds particular menace for historically marginalized First Nations without access to clean water, adequate housing, and health care.

This is an unprecedented crisis. Government responses will not be perfect, even as they pivot quickly with economic relief and new regulations to protect the vulnerable. But a lack of precedent is more reason for strong, constructive criticism.

If we truly want to leave no one behind in the COVID-19 recovery process, Canada must take two steps.

First, in line with calls from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, the federal and provincial governments must collect and make available disaggregated data on those contracting COVID-19. Neither provincial nor federal governments are currently collecting robust disaggregated data, though the City of Toronto is taking a strong lead that others can follow.

Geographical data on infection rates currently being shared is essential to understanding community spread. However, it is equally important to understand the spread of COVID-19 by race, gender, age, and socioeconomic class if we want to curb its growth and impacts.

Second, any substantive recovery process must be consultative and collaborative. Canada has strong civil society organizations that understand the intersecting vulnerabilities of different groups. They must be meaningfully consulted—especially organizations at the frontline of anti-discrimination efforts—or this crisis and recovery could exacerbate existing inequalities that hinge on race, gender, and class.

In a crisis, quick action is needed. But the impacts of COVID-19, both socially and economically, will be felt for generations. Canada’s aspirational commitment to leave no one behind must inform our actions along this marathon, addressing inequality as a root cause of vulnerability if we ever hope to increase our resilience to disasters.

The pandemic has begun to show how brittle Canadian society can be, where our collective resistance to a virus is only as strong as the vulnerabilities we’ve long let sit on the shoulders of marginalized groups. Early praise for Canada’s response to the crisis is well-founded, but there’s more work to be done.

IISD experts Peter Wooders and Ivetta Gerasimchuk met virtually to discuss the impact that the COVID-19 pandemic could have on the clean energy transition, including renewable energy and consumer and producer fossil fuel subsidies.

Hear what they had to say about the potentially broad-spectrum effects this ongoing crisis might have on global energy systems, or read the highlights of the transcript below.
 

Peter Wooders (P.W.): Hello, everybody. I am Peter Wooders, director of Energy at the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD). We've been analyzing and discussing the impacts of COVID-19 and the crisis on clean energy transitions for some weeks now. Today, I'm joined by my colleague Ivetta Gerasimchuk, the lead of our Sustainable Energy Supplies pillar in the Energy program, for a discussion which I hope you will find useful as you look to define your responses to this ongoing crisis.

What have you been noticing that's happening on the energy supply chains from the COVID crisis?

Ivetta Gerasimchuk (I.G.): All energy is now experiencing a lack of demand. So it's hard for fossil fuels: oil prices have dropped by more than half. And it's also hard for renewables. There is now competition for investment, for buyers actually.

P.W.: It's a buyer's market, and one of my observations around the stimulus and the bailout packages people have been talking about now has been the heavy level of competition from all levels of and all types of energy production for government assistance. We're seeing that from oil, from gas, from coal, and I think one of the concerns here now is that decisions made by governments today in response to this crisis could fix us and lock us into the ways we produce and consume energy and emit carbon for years, and perhaps even decades, to come. Is that how you're seeing it too?

I.G.: Of course. It's a human tragedy, and the immediate response to the health crisis now is paramount. But also, everything we do now has profound effects on future generations. So the future is in our hands, and it's not only about washing them.

Supporting vulnerable people

P.W.: How do you feel that clean energy transitions can support those vulnerable people who are now suffering in the COVID-19 crisis?

I.G.: It's, in a way, the same vulnerable people that suffer from climate change and from a lack of energy access. It's people in poor households, in remote places, and also in not-so-remote places, in bad urban conditions, in developing countries. It's governments and countries with a lack of capacity on the whole. It's also elderly people because they suffer from air pollution from fossil fuel combustion, for instance; that makes them more vulnerable to COVID because air pollution causes non-communicable diseases: respiratory, cardiovascular, diabetes, and many, many other afflictions.

It's also very sad because some of the elements of this crisis could have been avoided, and it's true for both the climate and the health crisis. For instance, subsidies to fossil fuels, to coal power, have been causing some of these problems, but they were also wasted resources, and we know that if they had been used differently—for healthcare, for education—that would have made us more resilient.

P.W.: I couldn't agree more. And I think another opportunity we have that we’ve perhaps missed in the past but now have a chance to move back to, is the creation of jobs. We hear in all these stimulus packages: why not think about upscaling the performance of the buildings that we live in and that we work in through energy efficiency. But I think there are lots of other job creation opportunities and re-skilling opportunities through distributed renewables for more access, through the construction of low carbon infrastructure. We could also consider soil remediation and deal with some of the extractive sites that are heavily polluting, including orphan wells in Alberta, Canada, and other things.

A lot of these are so labour-intensive that they could help generate the jobs that all countries are now looking for as they think about the economic recovery once they start flattening the curve and moving through. It's also, I think, very instructive to look back at some of the previous crises and how countries reacted. For instance, South Korea’s stimulus package in response to the 2008–2009 financial crisis, where a lot of money went into river restoration, tourism sites, energy efficiency, and green transport, has been held up as one that was very successful.

Some of the work that IISD's Energy program has done with the Government of Denmark on energy swaps—taking savings and putting them into clean energy by, for example, moving money from kerosene subsidies to solar energy—has also been very effective. There are all these just transition opportunities. And I think as we look forward into economic recovery, a lot of it is going to be about jobs.

The future of renewables

P.W.: Something that's been very strongly on my mind, and I think we've discussed before and perhaps even disagreed on before, is renewables. Will the growth in renewables be positively affected by this crisis or negatively affected—or perhaps it's too early to say?

I.G.: I think there's going to be more growth in renewables, but slower than if we hadn't had the COVID crisis. We talked a little bit about the disruption of supply chains before, and a lot of renewable energy equipment has been provided by China (but of course also by some other countries: Germany, Denmark). We’ve also seen some countries even saying that renewables are not an essential service in this situation and curtailing renewables.

But I'm also thinking of the European examples, and in particular about the U.K. and Germany, wherein the first quarter of this year renewables provided the lion’s share of electricity. It was 45% in the U.K. in Q1, and it was 52% in Germany. So it's like a paradigm shift with the cost of renewables being so low now. Certainly, the growth will be smaller, but it won't be stalled.

Consumer fossil fuel subsidies

P.W.: We've seen incredibly quick reductions in the price of oil on the global market. And one of the things that we work on very strongly in IISD Energy, and have done for many years, is helping governments to identify where they give subsidies to their consumers of oil and gas products—to gasoline, to diesel, to liquefied petroleum gas, whatever—and then to help them reform those when the situation is right and when we are sure that they can be done politically well and for sustainable development reasons. How much change are we going to see in the level of consumption subsidies because of this oil price reduction?

I.G.: Consumption subsidies at this price, of course, are going to go down, and countries should use this opportunity to reform them. We've seen this scenario already in 2014 at the end of the year when oil prices collapsed the previous time, and a lot of countries—over 40 according to our estimates and the little map that we are doing—were cutting and reforming their consumption subsidies. Because, mostly in developing countries and emerging economies, they account for the difference between the higher international benchmark oil price and the lower domestic prices. Now, this difference is next to nothing, so our estimate would probably be, at the price of USD 30 per barrel, that consumption subsidies will go down from over USD 400 billion per year in 2018 to around USD 200 billion per year.

It's a very big cut, but the key is for countries to ratchet these reforms because we were also seeing in 2018, 2019, when the oil price was creeping up, that some countries started backsliding on fossil fuel subsidy forums and some countries started reintroducing those subsidies.

P.W.: Very interesting. I think there’s a great opportunity here for consumption subsidy reform for big savings. We saw in the past that India and Indonesia were both saving USD 15 billion a year when they came out of these low oil prices in 2014, 2015.

Producer fossil fuel subsidies

P.W.: The other side of this, in the subsidy world, is governments are either being asked for consumption subsidies when prices are high or they're being asked for production subsidies when prices are low. So are we now going to see in the stimulus packages, and then in other requests, lots of requests from companies and from corporations for production fossil fuel subsidies?

I.G.: Yes. It's happening: we've seen in Alberta, Canada, the government already injected equity and provided a loan guarantee to the Keystone XL pipeline. This is a classic example of what I would call zombie energy because zombie energy is only brought back to life by government subsidies; otherwise it's not viable—it should be dead and in the ground. We estimated that global fossil fuel production subsidies are around USD 100 billion per year, and with the goals that we hear from the industry and the signals from the governments, unfortunately, it looks like this number is going to considerably increase in 2020.

P.W.: Are there conditions that governments can put in if they're going to put stimulus packages together and help airline companies or help fossil fuel companies?

I.G.: Yes, absolutely. The first condition is, of course, no layoffs, because it's unacceptable for companies to get bailouts, pay dividends, and lay off people at the same time. But there are other things. The things you mentioned can be fuel-efficiency standards, can be diversification of business—and I think with government ownership and with state-owned enterprises, in a lot of developing and emerging economies, governments really have a lot of influence over how the energy sector is going to develop.

P.W.: Thank you for speaking with me today, Ivetta. Hopefully we're back in the Geneva office together sooner rather than later. It's pretty clear that whether these impacts on clean energy transition are going to be positive or negative is not yet set. We very much hope that they will be positive, and I think there's plenty of support for that case. The more evidence and views we can get out on that, the better.

I.G.: Thank you, Peter, and thank you everyone for listening. Keep safe and healthy.