Building a Greener Recovery: Implications for Emerging and Developing Economies

Rebuilding a greener world economy after the COVID-19 pandemic requires learning from what worked and what did not from past efforts to adopt green stimulus during the 2008-9 Great Recession. These investments emphasized energy efficiency spending and “shovel-ready” clean energy projects, and almost all green stimulus was in G20 economies. They impacted job creation and expansion of renewables for several years but provided little long-term support for de-carbonizing the world economy. The biggest obstacles have been major market disincentives, especially the underpricing of fossil fuels. Policies for a sustained green recovery amount to much more than just short-term stimulus. They require carefully targeted long-term public infrastructure investments and pricing reforms.

However, the package of reforms will be different for major economies, such as the G20, as opposed to smaller emerging and developing economies, reflecting their different structural conditions and needs. During this talk, the speaker will discuss the potential cost-effective and innovative policy mechanisms that could be considered by emerging and developing countries to yield progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).