Tackling climate change presents us
with an opportunity to move to a cleaner, safer and healthier
world - but only if we look at the big picture, seizing the opportunities to tackle
multiple problems at once and avoiding false solutions. This page
suggests a set of ambitious, joined-up policies that could help us to maximise the co-benefits and minimise the conflicts of climate policy.
General policies
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Take co-benefits into account in policy decisions. For example, air quality benefits should be included in cost-benefit analysis of climate policy options.
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Focus support on win-win technologies and policies. These include energy efficiency, material efficiency and behaviour change. Beware of policies with few co-benefits and major conflicts, such as CCS and geo-engineering.
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Avoid lock-in to fossil fuels. Set ambitious targets for a rapid shift to low-carbon energy sources. End fossil fuel subsidies. Place a moratorium on exploitation of environmentally damaging sources such as tar sands and arctic oil.
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Address the rebound effect. Control total resource use and carbon emissions with caps, taxes, and policies to encourage behaviour change.
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Compensate losers. Help businesses, households and developing countries to adapt to a low-carbon economy, with appropriate financial and technical support. Provide support and retraining for workers who lose their jobs.
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Re-think the economy. Investigate ways of coping with the potential impact of a low consumption economy on jobs, pensions and social spending. These might include encouraging shorter working hours, ecological tax reform, job guarantee schemes, basic income schemes and changes to the monetary system.
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Lifestyle and culture. Encourage a shift to low-carbon lifestyles, with incentives, rewards and information campaigns to emphasise the health and well-being benefits of walking and cycling, eating less meat and adopting a less materialistic lifestyle. Government should lead by example, fostering an ‘I will if you will’ approach with low-carbon public procurement policies.
Specific areas
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Air quality. There should be more emphasis on reducing emissions of black carbon, ozone precursors and methane, which are greenhouse gases as well as causing health and eco-system impacts. Key policies include addressing emissions from vehicles, and providing more efficient stoves in developing countries.
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Nuclear. Problems that need to be solved include waste disposal, safety risks, routine releases of radionuclides into air and water, the impacts of uranium mining, and the risks of proliferation and terrorism. Generation IV designs offer potential to mitigate these problems.
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Intermittent renewables. Enable a maximum contribution from renewable energy by encouraging a diverse mix of renewable energy sources, setting up good grid interconnections with neighbouring regions, building more energy storage facilities and investing in smart grids and smart supply and demand management technologies.
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Landscape impacts of renewables. Address landscape and other impacts of large wind, solar and hydro-power schemes through sensitive siting, full environmental assessments, involving local communities at an early stage, providing transparent information and encouraging co-operative schemes that share the benefits with local communities.
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Bio-fuels. Safeguards such as certification and regulation are needed to ensure that bio-fuel production does not entail destruction of valuable habitats such as rainforests, or displacement of local communities. The impacts of bio-fuels on land use, water demand and food prices should also be taken into account. Second-generation biofuels can mitigate these impacts.
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REDD and offsetting schemes. If monitoring and verification can be resolved and the rights of local communities can be protected, REDD schemes offer tremendous potential for climate and biodiversity protection, and international funding should be made available. There is an urgent need to protect areas of high biodiversity in the short term, while plans for REDD are being finalised.
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Agriculture. Provide financial and technical support to promote the uptake of climate-smart agricultural techniques such as agroforestry, low-till agriculture, cover crops and addition of organic matter to the soil, and encourage more research into methods of improving yields from organic farming.
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Resource efficiency. A zero waste economy offers huge co-benefits for climate, economy and environment. Priority areas are re-use and recycling of electronic waste and construction waste, and avoidance of food waste. The emphasis should be on designing out waste from the start of the production process, with eco-design of products to be durable, upgradeable, re-usable and recyclable. Regulations such as landfill bans, recycling targets and product take-back have a key role.
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Transport sector. The transport sector offers the largest co-benefits for air quality and energy security. Important measures include fuel efficiency standards for vehicles; promotion of public transport, walking and cycling; control of traffic levels through congestion charges, fuel and aviation taxes, traffic calming or parking restrictions; better urban planning; and encouragement of demand reduction measures such as video-conferencing or teleworking.
Links to other co-benefits pages
- Cleaner air: reduced pollution from fossil fuels
- Sustainable forests, food and farming
- Safer and more secure energy supplies
- Less waste: a resource-efficient economy
- Stronger economy: long-term stability and prosperity
- Health and well-being: benefits of a low-carbon lifestyle
- Summary table
- Comparison of policy options
- A tale of two strategies