This paper provides an overview of the technology and financing options available to address the problem and better plan for stormwater market management. Specifically, the analysis focuses on the creation of stormwater markets.

Finding solutions to the stormwater problem is critical. Urban areas are rapidly expanding, climate variability is increasing, and social and environmental impacts are becoming more difficult to anticipate and more expensive to fix. In addition, funds are simply not available from the public sector to meet the increasing needs for capital and operation and maintenance costs of water management infrastructure.

Instead of targeting the management of stormwater runoff by centralized, end-of-pipe and capital-intensive gray infrastructure, green infrastructure aims to increase surface infiltration and lower the amount of stormwater at the source. Green infrastructure requires interventions by land and property owners, representing a decentralized approach to stormwater management. While investments would take place primarily on private property, the benefits of such interventions would be felt by many. As a result, the economics of the investment have not made these interventions very popular in the past. Policy support is needed to stimulate private investments.

The vast majority of empirical cases are examples of policy implementation (either individual policies or a portfolio of options), but the implementation of stormwater markets is also on the rise. These represent a quantity-based approach, with a set number of allowances, normally declining over time. Available options include credit trading and the creation of a mitigation bank. Various additional mechanisms can be used to create incentives for investments in stormwater management. Examples include in-lieu fees, permittee-responsible mitigation (offsets) and a combination of policy instruments.

The opportunities emerging from the establishment of stormwater markets are considerable, especially when considering the potential social, economic and environmental impacts. To obtain such benefits, and in light of the design and implementation challenges identified, a customized approach is required. This would ensure that the market is designed to create synergies with existing legal frameworks and generate enough buy-in to work effectively for a variety of economic actors, a key requirement to reach scale.

Infrastructure banks play an essential role in closing the global infrastructure deficit.

They have been implemented in different shapes and forms globally, some with more success than others. The purpose of this paper is to share some of the most notable examples globally and provide a set of key recommendations for countries exploring similar models to support their infrastructure pipelines.

More than 40 government representatives from 17 African countries attended a workshop in Yaoundé, Cameroon, from February 26 to March 1 on how to implement the IGF’s guidance on managing artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). 

This workshop was co-hosted with the Government of Cameroon’s Ministry of Mines, Industry and Technological Development and the APC-EU Development Minerals Programme.

The interactive four-day workshop took participants through the three phases of the guidance, as they worked in small groups to design ASM management strategies and implementation plans. The ASM sector in Cameroon served as a case study for discussions and activities, with participants visiting an artisanal gold mining to deepen their understanding of the local context.

Please note the meeting report is available in French only.

The combined impact of fossil fuel subsidy reform (FFSR) and an increase in gasoline and diesel fuel taxation could do three things: save and raise money for governments, reduce emissions, and provide upfront and ongoing domestic resources to fund sustainable development and energy.

Currently, global consumer and producer fossil fuel subsidies stand at around USD 425 billion annually, and although consumer subsidies have decreased nominally due to a combination of lower oil prices and active reforms, it is also estimated that the overall effective gasoline taxation has actually fallen by 13.3 per cent from 2003 to 2015. However, with a combination of FFSR and sensible increases in fuel taxation, carbon dioxide emissions could be reduced by 23 per cent globally and raise much-needed revenue to governments (2.6 per cent of GDP). For example, India and Indonesia both saved around USD 15 billion each in 2015 from FFSR. Almost 70 countries included either FFSR or fuel taxation in their Nationally Determined Contributions. This paper makes the link between the fiscal instruments of fossil fuel subsidy reform and fossil fuel taxation with the implementation of the Paris Agreement and SDGs (Goal 7: sustainable energy; Goal 12: sustainable production and consumption where FFSR is included as a means of implementation [MoI]; and Goal 17: MoI and financing).

Global Trends in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining (ASM): A review of key numbers and issues was prepared by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) for the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (IGF).

ASM has experienced explosive growth in recent years due to the rising value of mineral prices and the increasing difficulty of earning a living from agriculture and other rural activities. An estimated 40.5 million people were directly engaged in ASM in 2017, up from 30 million in 2014, 13 million in 1999 and 6 million in 1993. That compares with only 7 million people working in industrial mining in 2014.

ASM is generally pursued as a route out of poverty or as an activity to complement insufficient income, especially in communities where alternative employment is hard to come by. ASM is also a very diverse sector. Its main challenges vary from region to region—and often from site to site. 

There is a perception that ASM is a “get-rich-quick” activity. This has misinformed legislation and extension programs and led to the application of one-size-fits-all policies. However, people working in ASM are far from the same. They range from those whose livelihoods rely on subsistence farming to skilled workers who migrated from urban areas in search of work.

Despite its low productivity, ASM is an important source of minerals and metals. It accounts for about 20 per cent of the global gold supply, 80 per cent of the global sapphire supply and 20 per cent of the global diamond supply. ASM is also a major producer of minerals indispensable for manufacturing popular electronic products, such as laptops and phones. For example, 26 per cent of global tantalum production and 25 per cent of tin comes from ASM. 

Since the oil price drop in the summer of 2014, Gulf countries have made significant advances in reforming heavily subsidized fossil fuel prices to domestic consumers.

Saudi Arabia reformed energy prices in 2015, after the United Arab Emirates implemented two large pricing reforms earlier that year. Oman, Bahrain and Qatar implemented price increases in 2016 and 2017. Some Gulf Cooperation Council countries that implemented automatic pricing mechanisms have regularly reviewed prices since. This paper from GSI summarizes these reforms and puts them in the context of wider developmental challenges in the Gulf. It also calls for more focused international support to energy pricing reforms in the Gulf region.

Poland has a strong tradition of coal mining and coal fired power.

Coal was the basis of the country’s industrialization, and today coal fired power still accounts for over 80 per cent of total electricity generation. With a large part of this coal coming from domestic sources, continued use of coal is often viewed as an important strategy in maintaining both energy independence and security. Aside from economics, the strength of the coal unions in Poland, and government ownership interests in both coal mining and the power sector, mean that the industry is central to both political and social discourse.

In spite of these factors, coal mining in Poland has witnessed a massive decline in employment from almost 400,000 miners in 1990 to around 100,000 miners in 2014. Prompted by the economic and social reforms associated with the fall of Communism, these job losses were largely a result of efficiency improvements. 

This study considers the policies and strategies that were adopted to help manage the decline in employment.In particular, it focuses on two measures: the Mining Social Package and Special Privileges for Mining Communes. It assesses the success of each of these policies in mitigating the adverse social and economic impacts of the decline of the industry and considers their relevance to the challenges of coal phase out today. 

The purpose of this scoping study is to explore options for strengthening gender considerations in Kiribati’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) process with a focus on its NAP document, the Joint Implementation Plan on Climate Change and Disaster Risk Management (KJIP), which is expected to be revised in 2018 to reflect the government’s new priorities.

To explore options for strengthening gender considerations in the revision of the KJIP, the NAP Global Network collaborated with the Office of the President to hold stakeholder consultations in the capital, South Tarawa, in August 2017. Based on these consultations and a desk review, we found the integration of gender considerations in the KJIP to be a major positive change because the linking of climate adaptation to gender equality is new at the policy and project levels.

Gender equality has only been recently raised as a political issue and gender mainstreaming has mostly occurred in relation to domestic violence. But much more needs to be done to foster better understanding of the linkages between gender equality and climate adaptation among government officials and women’s organizations. Based on lessons learned from this study, recommendations are offered to the government and development agencies interested in improving gender considerations in Kiribati’s NAP process.

This report compares the investment laws of the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member states, focusing on basic questions relating to the function of investment laws in each country.

The main findings of the paper are as follows:

• Not every ASEAN country has an investment law. For example, Singapore, which is the most successful ASEAN country in attracting foreign investment, does not have an investment law.
• Some ASEAN countries have multiple investment laws, each with a different function. For example, the Malaysian Promotion of Investment Act deals exclusively with investment incentives, while the Thai Foreign Business Act deals exclusively with restrictions and conditions on foreign investment.
• These laws form only a small part of the legal and regulatory regime governing investment. It is impossible to evaluate a country’s investment law without considering how it fits into the wider legal and regulatory framework governing investment.

This paper also highlights fundamental differences between investment laws and investment treaties:

• Among ASEAN countries, no country’s investment law includes the combination of vague investor rights commonly found in investment treaties. For example, aside from the Myanmar Investment Law (2016), no ASEAN investment law guarantees investors “fair and equitable treatment” (FET). FET is among the most far-reaching, and widely criticized, investor rights that investment treaties grant to foreign investors. Moreover, the Myanmar Investment Law defines FET very differently from the way that investment treaty tribunals have understood that concept.
• No ASEAN country grants general consent to investor–state arbitration in its investment law. However, many ASEAN countries do allow investor–state arbitration in cases where there is a specific agreement between an individual investor and the host government—in for example, an investor–state contract—to resolve a dispute through arbitration.

Conflict-sensitive conservation (CSC) is conservation programming and implementation that takes into account the causes and impacts of conflict and the actors involved in order to minimize conflict risks and maximize peace-building opportunities.

In September 2017, the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the IISD hosted a training workshop on CSC in Bukavu, South Kivu province, in the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The workshop was funded by the U.S. Agency for International Development.

Based on discussions from this workshop, this conflict analysis provides guidance for advancing CSC in the Maiko–Tayna–Kahuzi–Biega landscape.