Climate change mitigation policies and poverty

Climate change mitigation policies include a wide range of actions, including efforts to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuel combustion, energy efficiency and end‐use innovations, and reducing carbon emissions through avoided deforestation. Such policies can affect poverty in developing countries either directly or indirectly. Direct impacts on poverty include payments for avoided deforestation that affect the livelihoods of the poor, reduced GHG emissions that also produce co‐benefits of improved air quality and health, and clean energy and energy efficiency effects on energy poverty. Indirect impacts on the poor in developing countries occur through the changes in trade, economic growth, and other economy‐wide effects. To date, there is a lack of systematic or comprehensive analyses of these direct and indirect impacts of mitigation policies on the poor. Although such policies may benefit the poor, some actions may worsen poverty and hinder its alleviation. This suggests that a more comprehensive approach should be employed in analyzing how mitigation policies affect the poor in developing countries, and in particular, in assessing how policy design and implementation can influence the potential trade‐offs between the positive and negative impacts on poverty alleviation. This article is categorized under: Climate Economics > Economics and Climate Change Climate and Development > Social Justice and the Politics of Development