On June 2, 2014, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released proposed regulations for regulating greenhouse gas emissions from electric utility generating units in the country.

In the wake of its announcement, the EPA has been emphasizing that its proposed electricity rules will reduce emissions from the country’s most significant source of emissions—power plants.  Conversely, the messaging from the Government of Canada has been that Canada took similar action on coal-fired plants in 2012, and that the percentage drop in emissions from those plants is likely to be proportionately greater than those proposed by Washington.

However, both these perspectives leave unanswered the question of how these policies will affect total national emissions and contribute to mitigation pledges. It is this question that this policy brief attempts to answer.

After decades of international isolation, Myanmar is going through a process of political transition toward democracy.

As part of the reform process, the Government of Myanmar is attempting to attract more foreign investment to the country and has already taken several steps toward achieving this objective. One policy choice facing the government of Myanmar is the decision of whether to enter into investment treaties with foreign governments and, if so, on what terms.

This note examines the legal and policy implications of the Myanmar–Japan Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT), signed on December 15, 2013. Although Myanmar is already a party to a handful of bilateral and multilateral investment treaties, the Myanmar–Japan BIT is particularly significant for two reasons. The first is that it is the first investment treaty to be negotiated and signed by the transitional government that took power in 2011. As such, it provides insights into how the current government might approach other investment treaty negotiations over the coming years. The second reason is that the Myanmar–Japan BIT differs significantly from recent ASEAN investment treaty practice to which Myanmar is a party.

This paper reviews Myanmar’s existing investment treaties and examines the legal and policy implications of key terms contained in them.

The purpose of the paper is to provide an overview of Myanmar’s current investment treaty context, which can inform a way forward for possible reform and contribute to a deeper understanding of the implications of potential future treaties. The paper focuses on key provisions that have proven important in other countries’ experience with investment treaties over the past decade.

The main findings of the paper are as follows:

1. Myanmar has seven investment treaties in force, plus an eighth treaty—the Myanmar–Japan bilateral investment treaty (BIT)—that may soon enter into force.
2. Myanmar’s investment treaties cover the investment relationship between Myanmar and 15 other countries. These 15 countries are all located in East, South-East and South Asia and in Oceania (Australia and New Zealand).
3. Four of Myanmar’s investment treaties, which cover Myanmar’s investment relationship with 13 different countries, were negotiated either with or through ASEAN.
4. Myanmar’s investment treaties that were negotiated with or through ASEAN show some degree of consistency, although important differences between these four treaties remain. In contrast, there is a very high degree of variation between Myanmar’s ASEAN investment treaties and Myanmar’s BITs, both in the types of provisions included in different treaties and in the drafting of provisions common to several treaties.
5. These variations have significant legal implications for the nature and extent of Myanmar’s obligations under different treaties. They also make the government’s task of complying with Myanmar’s existing investment treaties more complex.
6. Many of Myanmar’s investment treaties contain most-favoured nation (MFN) clauses. The effect of these provisions is that any benefit extended to foreign investors from one country under one investment treaty may need to be extended to foreign investors covered by Myanmar’s other investment treaties. As a result, Myanmar may be required to grant a combination of benefits to foreign investors that is more generous than that provided by any one of Myanmar’s investment treaties, considered individually.
7. Aside from the Myanmar–Philippines BIT, all of Myanmar’s investment treaties allow foreign investors to bring claims under the treaty directly to investor–state arbitration. In such disputes, an arbitral tribunal will decide if the state in which the investment is located has breached the treaty. If the investor’s claim is successful, the tribunal will make a binding, monetary award against the state.

Because Myanmar’s investment treaties are enforceable through investor–state arbitration, questions relating to the extent of Myanmar’s obligations under different treaties have important practical implications.

This discussion paper looks at fossil-fuel pricing and subsidies in the political, social and economic context of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries: Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

It provides an overview of IEA and IMF estimates of fossil-fuel subsidies in GCC countries, as well as additional GSI price-gap calculations on subsidies for gasoline and diesel used as transport fuels and electricity generation. The paper then analyzes the impact that fossil-fuel subsidies have on renewable energy development in the region. It finds that even partial reform of fossil-fuel subsidies would assist GCC countries in meeting their economic, fiscal, social and environmental objectives, but that political opposition to increased energy prices is a key barrier to change.

It provides an overview of where we’re gaining strength and where we have more work to do, by looking at 16 key indicators of well-being. These key indicators were identified through consulting with experts in the various fields, paying particular attention to those indicators that can best signal the overall status of each of the eight themes of well-being. The Peg team also chose indicators that are compelling and actionable and can thus inspire Winnipeggers who want to create positive change in our community.

With each indicator identified in this report, we have provided information on why the indicator is important, the numbers that outline how we are doing, a graph illustrating the trend, and the source of the data. Where available, we also provide a comparison to provincial or national data, as well as a link to a Peg video that puts a human face to the numbers.

In 2012 the Government of Manitoba released its environment plan, TomorrowNow.

Its commitments include creating a green economy action plan and updating the climate change plan for the Province of Manitoba. In efforts to meet these commitments, the International Institute for Sustainable Development assisted the province in developing its innovative green economy action plan as well as updating its climate change plan to address the need to transition to a green economy and low-carbon development framework for Manitoba. The work was carried out through a series of dialogue sessions with key stakeholders on climate change and the green economy. The background paper provides information to the public about Manitoba’s transportation and infrastructure sectors and their importance for the province to address climate change and strengthen its green economy.

While economic analysis methods such as cost-benefit and economic impact assessments are well established, their application to climate change impacts on transportation infrastructure is less developed.

This guide focuses on aiding practitioners to better understand how to reveal the economic implications of both ongoing damages to transport infrastructure and the benefits of investing to improve infrastructure resiliency.

The guide includes: a taxonomy of economic benefits from transportation infrastructure, relating these benefits to costs as climate change alters infrastructure services and triggers additional costs; an exploration of the economic toolkit; a step-by-step approach to conducting a climate risk assessment; and some further thoughts on the process.

In a continent that is starved for energy and infrastructure, it is an enigma that India’s markets for energy efficiency have yet to take off. The authors of the report spent several months researching and debating this issue with stakeholders in India and around the world.

The case for energy efficiency is most certainly well documented. The crux of the problem, however, is that that politicians, policy-makers and financiers have yet to realize that energy efficiency is inexpensive and easily scalable when compared to the development of large-scale power plants. The Indian focus is very much on increasing energy generation rather than avoiding the use of energy in the first place. India needs to value each kilowatt hour (kWh) of energy saved on par with each unit of energy generated. And as such, the first policy choice in the path towards energy security and energy for all must be encouraging industry and consumers to use energy more efficiently. Moreover, decision-makers must realize that if energy is saved where it is easiest—across low-tariff and highly subsidized consumer segments—energy distribution companies (discoms) are able to offer the saved kilowatts (or negawatts) to higher tariff paying consumers.

In short, India’s energy deficit cannot be accomplished without due focus on energy efficiency; to that end, in this document, we present 10 big ideas to make this sector bankable. All of these ideas are practical and implementable in the immediate term. They do not require large executing budgets, but they do require technical expertise, political will and persistent follow up. These ideas are also multi-disciplinary—they provide solutions to prohibitive perceptions of risk in investing and financing energy efficiency, the lack of reliable base lines and poor policy incidence.

In 2012 the Government of Manitoba released its environment plan, TomorrowNow.

Its commitments include creating a green economy action plan and updating the climate change plan for the Province of Manitoba. In efforts to meet these commitments, the International Institute for Sustainable Development assisted the province in developing its innovative green economy action plan as well as updating its climate change plan to address the need to transition to a green economy and low-carbon development framework for Manitoba. The work was carried out through a series of dialogue sessions with key stakeholders on climate change and the green economy. This background paper provides information to the public about Manitoba’s agriculture and water sectors and their importance for the province to address climate change and strengthen its green economy.

The Adaptive Design and Policy Assessment Tool (ADAPTool) is an Excel-based online tool developed by the International Institute for Sustainable Development and partners as a structured guide through an assessment process that compares existing policies and programs to the characteristics of adaptive policies.

ADAPTool assesses policies or programs in relation to a defined stressor or external change. It produces two kinds of assessments: 1) it gauges the ability of existing policies or programs to support adaptation measures undertaken in response to the specified stressor by the policy target groups; 2) it assesses the general adaptability of the policies or programs themselves, which is to say, whether they are likely to respond well under the influence of the defined changes as well as under unforeseeable changes in the future. ADAPtool builds on IISD-led research on Creating Adaptive Policies.

In this pilot application, ADAPtool for existing policies was applied to the seven goals of Saskachewan’s 25-year Water Security Plan (WSP). IISD worked with analysts from the WSP of the Province of Saskatchewan to conduct the ADAPtool analyses, including: initial project scoping (including choice of policies to be analyzed); training on use of ADAPtool; literature review and vulnerability assessments for the forestry-relevant sectors; adaptation analysis, adaptive policy analysis and final reporting on results.

A key finding through this pilot application of the ADAPtool for existing policies was that this tool is not well suited to a plan that has not yet been implemented. This application provided lessons about the limitations of the tool in this context.

Based on our analysis, all goals or policies within the scope of the analysis (and comprising the 25-year plan) provided indirect support to various sectors in Saskatchewan facing increasing climate change impacts requiring adaptation actions: 133 out of the total 198 adaptation actions have no direct program support. Of the 198 total adaptation actions, 65 are supported (directly or indirectly) by one of more of the policies. The adaptation needs that were not supported by the policies assessed should be scrutinized for their implications and responses developed accordingly. Five of the seven policies reviewed were vulnerable to climate change impacts, and it was recommended that more effort be devoted to explore feasible levels of water withdrawals under diverse climate change scenarios to reduce the vulnerability of the policies and managed water resources. The policies fall short in supporting other capacities, but all performed relatively well in foresight methods and multistakeholder involvement. The four policies that had explicit instruments for enabling self-organization and networking performed moderately well in this capacity. A plan is in place to review the overall 25-year plan every 5 years, and five of the seven policies explicitly mention review mechanisms. Based on the wording of the plan, the policies seem moderately decentralized and the instruments suggested include a range of different kinds of policies.