Last week, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change kicked off the 26th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, or COP26, in Glasgow. Members of J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI) staff team are on the ground at the conference, speaking at events, hosting meetings with potential partners, and learning from our climate colleagues.
K-CAI, in partnership with King Philanthropies, supports evidence generation and catalyzes the scale-up of high-impact policy solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation, aiming to improve the lives of 25 million people over the next decade. At COP26, K-CAI staff are meeting with partners to innovate, test and scale evidence-informed climate solutions to help reach this goal.
Every year, the COP brings together global leaders to discuss ambitious policy and technological approaches to mitigate and adapt to climate change. This year, though, the conference is more significant than ever—marking five years since the historic Paris Agreement.
Now, countries are being asked to submit new climate action plans, or Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). 2021 is described as a “make or break” year for climate action by the World Meteorological Organization, and with climate impacts continuing to worsen and the dire findings of the IPCC’s latest report on climate change, the urgency for significant climate strategies has never felt greater.
A large component of success at COP26 is mobilizing climate finance. In 2015, as part of the Paris Agreement, high-income nations pledged $100 billion a year by 2020 to low- and middle-income countries to support achieving their NDCs. It was recently announced that high-income nations have failed to meet this financing commitment and will likely be three years late to deliver these funds. Climate finance will be key for rebuilding trust between nations in order to effectively address climate change.
But financing alone cannot guarantee effective climate mitigation and adaptation action. Technological and policy innovations do not always achieve their desired effects when they are implemented in the field. Although there is substantial evidence about the causes of climate change and its effects, evidence on the impacts of climate solutions on people and the planet is lacking. Following COP26, decision-makers will be looking for the best climate strategies to invest in—it is critical that financing goes towards and is informed by evidence generation so that we can know the outcomes of climate innovations in real-world settings prior to scaling and have the greatest impact possible.
In order to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we need to abate as many tons of greenhouse gas emissions as possible, as soon as possible. Leaders will undoubtedly renew or increase their emissions reduction commitments at COP26, but this is easier said than done.
For example, in a randomized evaluation focused on reducing energy consumption, low-income households were randomly assigned to receive encouragement and assistance to apply for a fully-subsidized residential energy efficiency program in order to test whether these strategies were effective. Despite the intervention, only a small percentage of the eligible households enrolled, and the energy savings of those who did was only around half of the upfront cost of the efficiency improvements. This study exemplifies how factors such as low take-up and savings not matching projections in real-world settings can impact the cost-effectiveness of climate innovations, underscoring the need to evaluate investments in the field before they are scaled.
Reducing greenhouse gas emissions will help everyone avoid the worst effects of climate change, which are locked in to intensify over the next thirty years. People in low- and middle-income communities and countries who have the fewest resources to adapt will likely bear the brunt of global inaction.
Adaptation strategies are also an important goal at COP26, but like reducing emissions, simply investing in innovations is not sufficient—climate finance must support their evaluation in the field.
An ongoing randomized evaluation in India, funded by K-CAI, is measuring the impact of payments as incentives to reduce groundwater depletion among smallholder farmers. As climate change threatens precipitation and surface water supplies in many regions, effective groundwater management is a key climate adaptation strategy for rural communities. Studies such as this have the potential to contribute essential knowledge to climate investments and which policies are scaled up—but much more practical evidence is needed.
As global leaders renew and increase their emissions reduction commitments and work to mobilize climate finance at COP26, it’s critical for evidence from rigorous randomized evaluations of potential solutions to guide policy decisions. Without evidence, climate financing and other resources may be squandered on strategies to address climate change that are not effective in the real world.
At J-PAL, K-CAI works to bridge the gap between evidence and policy. Through this work and collaboration between researchers and decision-makers, we can learn and generate new evidence as we take action in order to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
To learn more about partnership opportunities, please contact us at [email protected].
J-PAL's King Climate Action Initiative (KCA-I) has funded a total of 25 research projects including forest conservation on a budget and predicting floods in India.
IPCC’s recent climate report urges rapid action to produce deep reductions in emissions and adapt to climate change in the coming decades. We highlight key takeaways for poverty alleviation efforts.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recently released the Working Group I Sixth Assessment Report: The Physical Science Basis, a major update to the state of knowledge on the science of climate change. The report is also an urgent call to action. Rapid large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation solutions are needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.
The implications of the report extend beyond the world of climate science to J-PAL and others focused on poverty alleviation. Climate change’s impacts, such as heatwaves, heavy rainfalls, and droughts, disproportionately affect people experiencing poverty worldwide and threaten to reverse decades of progress in poverty alleviation.
The report concludes that human-induced climate change is already affecting weather and climate extremes in every region, and projected increases in the frequency and intensity of these events will only exacerbate pressure on vulnerable communities.
To develop high-impact solutions that reduce emissions and strengthen communities’ ability to adapt to climate change, we need more evidence on policy and technology solutions at the nexus of climate change and poverty alleviation and must ensure that existing evidence informs policy decisions.
In order to prevent the worst effects of climate change, greenhouse gas emissions need to be deeply reduced as soon as possible. Low- and middle-income countries produce the fewest greenhouse gas emissions, yet they also feel the sharpest effects of climate change.
The report considers five different carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions scenarios, including the associated temperature increases and impacts for each. Under all scenarios, temperatures will increase until at least 2050, and in only two scenarios are increases below 2.0°C. We have a short window to achieve these two now best-case scenarios. Although some consequences of climate change can no longer be avoided, significantly reducing emissions can help us avoid the direst effects, such as rising sea levels and increased frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.
For solutions to be effective, it is crucial to test them in real-world settings. Proven solutions to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions already exist. For example, a randomized evaluation led by J-PAL affiliated professor Seema Jayachandran and coauthors tested the effectiveness of a program that paid Ugandan landowners to not cut down their trees. The evaluation found that the program reduced deforestation in the areas covered by the contracts, without increasing deforestation in neighboring forests. The program was able to pause CO2 emissions at less than US$1 per metric ton, making it a potentially cost-effective solution.
Still, further evidence to abate emissions and mitigate climate change is needed. A current randomized evaluation, led by Robert Metcalfe and supported by J-PAL’s King Climate Action Initiative (K-CAI), is measuring how changing management practices can impact fuel efficiency and possibly reduce CO2 emissions in the shipping industry. By continuing to generate evidence, we can learn how to best achieve large emission reductions even in sectors where abatement is challenging, and contribute to both slowing climate change and alleviating poverty.
No matter how much we manage to reduce emissions, the impacts of climate change are guaranteed to increase over the next 30 years. We need to find effective adaptation solutions that benefit those most vulnerable to climate change. The findings from IPCC’s 2014 report on adaptation and vulnerability highlights that “Climate-related hazards exacerbate other stressors, often with negative outcomes for livelihoods, especially for people living in poverty.”
A major addition to IPCC’s Sixth Assessment Report, compared to previous reports, is a better understanding of how climate change will differ across regions. The report’s interactive atlas shows climate change impacts across geographies, highlighting areas that are more exposed to climate change. Across all regions, low-income communities have fewer resources to adapt and be resilient to climate change.
Efforts in international development and poverty alleviation should integrate a climate lens into their work to help develop a toolkit of evidence-informed solutions that build resilience for vulnerable communities. For example, an evaluation led by J-PAL affiliated professor Karen Macours and coauthors studied how conditional cash transfers could help households in rural areas in Nicaragua diversify their income and, in turn, increase their resilience to weather shocks.
Still, like for reducing emissions, further evidence is needed. K-CAI is supporting India’s first randomized evaluation of a flood early warning system for low-income communities, led by J-PAL affiliate Rohini Pande and Maulik Jagnani. By generating new evidence on adaptation strategies, we will be better equipped to help low-income communities and countries become more resilient to the effects of climate change.
Given the findings of IPCC’s latest climate report, and in anticipation of the Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability and Mitigation of Climate Change reports to be released next year, we need to continue generating research and scaling climate solutions proven to be effective in real-world settings, to both mitigate climate change and increase resilience to its increasing impacts.
If your agency or organization is interested in evaluating a program or policy, the K-CAI team is glad to facilitate connections with potential partners and J-PAL’s network of affiliated researchers. Please contact us at [email protected].
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J-PAL co-founders Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo write that rich countries' willingness to follow through on their promises to deliver Covid-19 vaccines to poorer countries and drastically reduce global vaccine inequity will test whether rich countries can be trusted to tackle global climate change.
