At its most basic level, sustainable public procurement aims to ensure that government spending benefits a country both environmentally and socially.

By ensuring small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are included in the government supply chain, public procurement has the potential to achieve outstanding economic and social benefits—including the creation of skilled jobs, increased domestic tax revenue, and more robust domestic economic growth. Well-designed public procurement policies also have the potential to catalyze technical development, increasing trade margins and overall productivity. The present report presents examples of innovation in public procurement in Mexico that encourage economic growth and access to finance for SMEs.

This paper was submitted to the Manitoba Clean Environment Commission (CEC) for consideration in its review of the regulation of Lake Winnipeg under the Water Power Act.

The submission makes the case for strategic basin management in the Lake Winnipeg/Nelson River basins to ensure that decisions related to lake regulation and related power management are made in an integrated context.

We make the case that Manitoba and the Lake Winnipeg/Nelson River basins will be able to adapt to the challenges of climate change, flood, drought and nutrient loading by adopting a whole-basin management approach while considering how the lake itself is regulated. For example, strategic management of wetlands and other potential water storage upstream can help address multiple concerns by capturing nutrients, storing water to reduce peak flows during floods and buffering against climate change. The state of Lake Winnipeg and the benefits it provides (such as power generation) are affected not only by lake regulation, but also by actions on and management of upstream land and water. We profile other large basins in which management for ecosystem services, including the generation of hydroelectric power, is being pursued. In particular, the Columbia River and Murray-Darling River basins are useful case studies in transboundary management to produce multiple benefits.

Our overarching recommendation is that there is need for a framework for basin-wide management, and that ecosystem services should be an integral part of its design. We make additional recommendations that link closely to large-basin management planning.

China’s drive to develop a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy is a top priority of the government, placing pressure on the industrial development zones (IDZs) to respond to a growing and diverse set of policy levers.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD), with the support of the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) and the Chinese Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM), is working with Chinese industrial and economics zones to identify key policy trends that will affect competitiveness and to provide insight to help better manage the transition to a low-carbon, resource-efficient economy. This synthesis report provides an overview of the two phases of the project, which a specific focus on the low-carbon drivers of IDZs, an overview of the research results, policy trends and drivers of low-carbon development in IDZs and Priority areas for action.

Phase 1 of IID’s project investigated how low-carbon management standards accelerate the development of competitive, low-carbon enterprises in China’s economic zones. Global research and an extensive business survey in China were used to assess business sentiments on how low-carbon management standards can help advance Chinese competitiveness. Phase 1 identified standards as a promising opportunity, but only one of a growing suite of low-carbon drivers for the industrial zones.

Phase 2 of the project supports a growing need in the zones to better respond to a dynamic array of policy levers. The work completed in this latest phase is focused on working with industrial zones and enterprises to help reveal the implications of the emerging mix of policies and to help them better manage their transition to low-carbon operations.

China is aggressively pursuing the development of low-carbon economic zones, and while there has been substantial work done to define targets and indicators for achieving greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reductions, there is now a need to provide guidance and tools to help the zones transition. 

GHG inventories for industrial and commercial facilities are an essential component of the transition to low-carbon operations, as they provide the foundation for identifying abatement opportunities while measuring and assessing progress towards achieving facility-level GHG targets. A GHG inventory system that provides for frequent, accurate, consistent, complete and transparent reporting is crucial to the success of these low-carbon policies and central to industries transitioning to low-carbon operations.

Inventory management requires many different stakeholders to supply information, conduct analyses, provide critical reviews and expert judgements, manage the compilation of the inventory and disseminate inventory data to stakeholders. The intent of this paper is to identify concrete steps that economic zones overseeing low-carbon development and companies included in low-carbon programs can implement in order to establish an effective GHG inventory management system. Typical barriers and gaps that economic zones may face in implementing GHG inventory systems are also addressed. 

A collaborative approach between the economic zones that have the authority to manage and report GHG emissions and the companies that must deliver them is presented in this policy brief. The approach is based on best practices and formal standards for GHG inventory development. The guidance presented is oriented to help zones and their member companies to develop emission inventories for a wide range of GHG programs, such as carbon trading, absolute caps and performance standards, which we refer to in this document as program rules. These program rules may evolve from either regional initiatives or national directives. This guidance will help both authorities and companies in economic zones understand the basic concepts related to inventory planning, development and management, as well as how to monitor, report and verify emissions.

Section 2 of the report provides an overall conceptual framework for the development and implementation of a GHG inventory system for economic zones. Section 3, 4 and 5 then outline process steps associated with planning, inventory development and reporting by covered entities and zone management.   

With China’s 2009 Copenhagen Accord commitment to reduce the greenhouse gas intensity of its economy by 40–45 per cent by 2020, the government has moved on regulations and incentives to improve energy efficiency and increase the mix of low greenhouse gas-emitting energy sources in the economy.

Another key driver, of course, is the poor air quality that is systemic in so many of China’s large cities. Also adding to the drive to decarbonize and improve air quality is energy security, which is both an issue outside of China’s borders and also an interprovincial issue. Some provinces with a heavy reliance on domestic coal are seeking to generate more non-emitting electricity at home, while simultaneously supporting innovation and technology development.

We can see, therefore, a whole host of nationally driven policies and programs that are beginning to cascade down to the provinces, municipalities and industrial zones. But we also see a more distributed effort to develop policy from the bottom up. This is, of course, supported by central guidance at the national level that sets overarching performance targets, which are then allocated out of the provincial and municipal levels. Local regulatory authorities are responsible for policy design to achieve their targets, following central guidance.

As the provinces, municipalities and industrial zones start to design and implement the policies, we can expect that they will take into account local circumstances. This jurisdictionally distributed policy setting has the impact of catalyzing a dynamic policy-learning process both within and outside of government. But, of course, there are headwinds. Notably, such a disparate system of policies and programs, with limited central guidance on implementation detail, is leading to an overlapping and complex set of policies that industry must sort out. 

Such complexities are leading to industry uncertainty about what is required and how best to respond.  Not only is it difficult for industry to understand and interact with this growing dynamic ecosystem of policies and programs, but there is also a risk of high regulatory costs associated with multiple transactions for compliance. Policy complexity can also lead to inefficiencies, with the regulated entities perhaps not entirely understanding what is required of them for compliance, leading to decisions that can hamper competiveness. At the very least, uncertainty in the policy environment will lead to inaction and deferred decisions with respect to major capital investments that could improve energy and greenhouse gas emissions performance in time. At worst, it could lead to high-emitting capital lock-in, where technology choices now lock-in high-emitting industrial processes that are more expensive to transition to low-carbon alternatives in the future.

It is in this dynamic environment that IISD is conducting original research that looks for emerging energy and greenhouse gas emission policy trends that affect business at the national, provincial, municipal and zone levels. A secondary objective is to help policy-makers better coordinate their energy and greenhouse gas policies and to learn how industry may respond to those policies.

In this paper, we provide a synthesis of over 100 policies and programs targeted at industry and identify trends in policy design that are likely to be key determinants of the policy impact on industry. While not an exhaustive review of all low-carbon and energy policies in China, with literally hundreds of policies emerging at the provincial and municipal levels, we do nevertheless provide a good overview on the emerging policy environment focusing on how central-level guidance is cascading down to industry. 

In China, the industrial sector is responsible for approximately 70 per cent of the country’s energy consumption and 72 per cent of its carbon emissions.

Accordingly, many policies and measures have been initiated in order to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gases emissions. This paper sheds light on the concerted Chinese effort to promote eco-efficient and low-carbon industrial parks. It includes a description and analysis of the three leading Chinese certification programs, their respective governance structures, and their associated procedures and indicator systems. This work concludes with a discussion of the commonalities among these schemes, their potential impacts for low-carbon transition, and the industrial zones’ motivations for and impediments to participating in these initiatives.

The International Institute for Sustainable Development has been conducting a project to assess how China’s technical and economic industrial zones are interacting with the emerging low-carbon and energy policy framework.

A major focus of the work is to assess the effectiveness of the policy environment from a business perspective, with the intention of providing policy-makers in government and industrial zones with information to help shape future policy design.

This report presents the results of a survey assessing business perceptions of the emerging low-carbon and energy policy framework. Starting in May 2014, 1,000 Chinese companies were surveyed, with 230 completed questionnaires from both light and heavy manufacturing facilities in 16 provinces. In addition to these online surveys, 12 in-depth interviews and site visits were completed, and a number of workshops were held to solicit input.

Through our work, we sought to understand how industry is managing their energy and greenhouse gas emissions. We asked a series of questions about internal management systems and practices, differentiating results by the size of participating facilities based on energy use. We asked a series of questions about business perceptions on the effectiveness of the current energy and low-carbon policies. We sought to understand the range of policies affecting business, as well as perceived barriers that limit how firms respond.  We then asked how firms might improve policy effectiveness from an administrative perspective as well as identifying the types of policy instruments that are preferred by industry. We then sought to identify the capacity needs of industry, focusing on the types of training and knowledge firms are seeking.

Based on the analysis, we identified opportunities to strengthen the current policy environment, highlighting areas where policy-makers might coordinate and strengthen policy. A series of recommendations also aim to make policy more efficient and to achieve the energy and emission goals of the policies, while keeping costs low to maintain industry competitiveness.

To our knowledge, this is the first systematic survey of business perceptions of China’s carbon and energy policies. Given the rapid development and deployment of low-carbon and energy policies, we fully recognize that significant work has been undertaken to implement a comprehensive set of policies. In that light, this report is intended to help policy-makers and business alike better understand the current system, while providing a window into how policy might be designed to be more effective and efficient.

This report provides a range of specific, action-oriented recommendations for China’s policy-makers on how to grow a green bonds market in China.

These policy options are gaining traction amongst top policy-makers in China: for example, many of them are included in recent policy agenda drafts from People's Bank of China, the central bank.

It is part of a broader project of the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) working in partnership with the Financial Research Institute of the Development Research Centre of the State Council (DRC-FRI): “Greening China’s Financial System” Initiative. It follows on from an earlier report on green bonds in China published in March 2014.

The How to issue a green bond in China is an issuance guideline for potential issuers of green bonds in China.

It provides five simple steps, from identifying green projects to issuing green bonds and is a useful guideline for practitioners.

The growing demand for non-renewable mineral resources is among the world’s greatest sustainability challenges.

But for many countries it can also present a significant opportunity for growth and development. While grappling with the important question of how to meet the resource needs of a growing population in a way that takes into consideration the needs of future generations, it is easy to overlook the role that mining and its benefits can play in a nation’s long-term social and economic development; with mining can come employment and skill development, investments in education, the construction of infrastructure, and the generation of much-needed revenue. The presence of a strong legal and policy framework is needed to maximize these benefits, a framework that promotes the development benefits of mining while upholding strong environmental and social standards. The Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, Metals and Sustainable Development (IGF) is working to advance such policies and good governance practices through its Mining Policy Framework (MPF).

With support from the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA), the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD) is working with selected member states of the IGF to help them operationalize practices consistent with the MPF. As a first step, IISD conducted an assessment of national law, policy and administrative frameworks for mining and minerals development and management in three IGF member states relative to the six themes of the MPF. The assessments measure the readiness of the member states to implement the MPF through these existing government measures. This report presents the assessment for Madagascar, with a view to: helping the government target their efforts in implementing the MPF; informing capacity-building efforts; and allowing for monitoring of progress over time.