Tag: Climate change
An Environmental Perspective on Belarus’s Sustainable Development
In the last two decades, Belarus has performed better than other CIS countries in sustainable development. However, Belarus has in recent years seen a decline in its global environmental rankings, particularly in the areas of climate action and environment. In 2023, the country’s standing worsened in the Sustainable Development Index, Climate Change Performance Index, and Environmental Performance Index compared to previous years and rankings. This policy brief analyzes Belarus’s performance across these indices and explores the potential causes of recent negative trends and the environmental decline in Belarus. It underscores the crucial role of political and civil engagement in ensuring long-term sustainability of environmental reforms in Belarus.
In recent years, political and economic turbulence has overtaken the public debate about the state of things in Belarus, while environmental issues have taken a back seat. However, tackling climate change is important in any political context, and in this policy brief, we delve into recent developments in Belarus along the environmental front.
Belarus has traditionally done relatively well in regard to sustainable development. For example, in the last two decades, it has consistently outperformed other CIS countries, as measured by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) Index, and has been on par with the Eastern European EU Member States (see Figure 1).
However, in the last few years, Belarus’s progress in this dimension has stagnated, and even partially reversed. This brief focuses on one of the drivers of this stagnation – recent developments in the environmental sphere. The brief shows that Belarus worsened its position in three major global indices measuring environmental performance and discusses which components of environmental performance have lagged the most. It proceeds to analyze the underlying causes for this stagnation. The brief concludes by discussing necessary policy measures to improve Belarus’s environmental sustainability.
Figure 1. SDG Index scores for selected countries, 2000-2023
Source: SDG Transformation Center.
Belarus in Global Environmental Rankings
Global environmental rankings are an essential tool for encouraging global efforts to tackle ecological challenges and promote sustainable development. The rankings aim to evaluate a country’s environmental policies and practices and provide a relative assessment of its sustainability efforts, pollution control, and conservation practices. We analyze the performance of Belarus with the help of three well-known indexes: the Sustainable Development Goals Index (SDG Index), the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI), and the Environmental Performance Index (EPI).
The Sustainable Development Goals Index
The SDG Index measures the progress of countries towards accomplishing the 17 SDGs. Its score can be interpreted as a percentage of SDG achievement (Sachs et al., 2023). It is based on 97 indicators that are grouped by SDGs. The indicators are normalized on a 0-100 scale, and the scores are calculated as averaging across respective indicators. The SDG Index includes the total score and scores for individual goals (Sachs et al., 2023).
The SDG Index scores for Belarus improved significantly between 2000 and 2020, increasing by 8.31 points (see Figure 1). However, since 2020, the score has stagnated and even declined slightly. In 2020, Belarus ranked 23rd out of more than 160 countries. In 2023, it dropped to 30th place, the lowest since 2001.
To a large part, the decline in Belarus’s SDG Index score is driven by a drop in the index for the 16th SDG ”Peace, justice and strong institutions”. However, Belarus has also faced stagnation in the SDGs that are explicitly related to the environment – such as the index for SDG 7: “Affordable and Clean Energy”, SDG12: ”Responsible Consumption and Production” and SDG13: “Climate Action” (see Figure 2).
Figure 2. Selected SDG Index components for Belarus, 2020-23
Source: SDG Transformation Center.
These developments reflect Belarus’s key challenges, including its excessive reliance on fossil fuels and insufficient focus on renewable energy; inefficient management of waste and emissions, including plastic and food waste; low priority of climate change issues in the country’s economic and social policies, high carbon intensity in the economy and low ambition when it comes to emission reductions. The Belarusian Civil Society Report on the Sustainable Development Goals’ implementation (2022) also refers to similar challenges.
As the SDG Index covers a broad range of sustainability aspects, it may be less precise when it comes to the specificities of developments in the environmental domain. To get a better grasp of these developments, it is useful to consider more refined indices addressing specifically environmental performance and climate change adaptation.
The Climate Change Performance Index
The CCPI is a tool to monitor the climate protection efforts of 63 countries and the EU, which together make up more than 90 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. This index was developed by Germanwatch in collaboration with the NewClimate Institute and the Climate Action Network. Published annually since 2005, the Climate Change Performance Index tracks countries’ efforts to combat climate change. As an independent monitoring tool, it aims to enhance transparency in international climate politics and to enable comparison of climate protection efforts and progress made by individual countries. The CCPI tracks climate protection performances in four areas: GHG emissions (40 percent of the overall score), renewable energy (20 percent), energy use (20 percent) and climate policy (20 percent) (Burck et al., 2024). The CCPI ranks countries’ efforts as very high, high, medium, low, and very low, with the actual scores normalized between 0 and 100.
The CCPI for Belarus has exhibited an uneven development. In most of the considered years, Belarus’s efforts to prevent climate change were ranked as low, except for 2010-2012 and 2018-2019 when they were characterized as medium or moderate. The lowest scores were recorded in 2017 and from 2020 to 2024, highlighting that climate protection has been less prioritized in Belarus in recent years compared to earlier periods.
The relative CCPI ranking for Belarus is similar to the SDG Index (Figure 1). In 2024, Belarus performed worse than the average for Eastern European countries that are part of the EU – their average CCPI score was 55.43. Still, Belarus performed better than some members of this group (Poland (44.4), Czechia (45.41) and Hungary (45.93)). At the same time, Belarus displayed the best results among CIS countries, as Russia scored 31.00, Kazakhstan 38.52 and Uzbekistan 46.68 in 2024, respectively.
While Belarus slightly improved its score in 2024, relative to 2023, it actually moved down the country ranking in all areas considered by the CCPI. The country still received a medium rating in the areas of GHG emissions and energy use. However, the 2024 efforts with respect to renewable energy and climate policy were once again rated as very low, resulting in a relatively low overall ranking in 2024. CCPI experts point to low diversification of imported energy resources, high reliance on fossil fuels, and delayed climate action as key underlying issues.
Figure 3. CCPI Scores for Belarus, 2008-2024
Source: Based on data from Climate Change Performance Index reports 2008-2024.
The Environmental Performance Index
The Environmental Performance Index ranks the performance of countries on environmental health, ecosystem vitality, and their efforts to prevent climate change (Block et al., 2024). It allows tracking of countries’ progress towards established environmental policy targets. The EPI was developed by Yale University in collaboration with Columbia University and is supported by the World Economic Forum and the European Commission. The EPI framework has been repeatedly changed over the years to incorporate more detailed accounting and further indicators. Thus, it is not possible to directly compare EPI levels for different years.
Instead, we look at the evolution of the EPI ranking for Belarus: in 2016 the country ranked 35th among 180 countries, in 2020 it ranked 49th, and in 2022 its position dropped to 55th place.
In 2022, the EPI score for Belarus amounted to 48.5, surpassing all other CIS countries, for which the average score was 39.79. However, Eastern-European EU members all outperformed Belarus, with an average score of 57.92.
It is worth pointing out how differently Belarus performs with respect to the three policy objectives of the EPI. The first component concerns environmental health – it reflects how well a country mitigates environmental risks that directly affect the health and safety of its population and includes issues such as air quality, sanitation and drinking water, heavy metals, and waste management. Belarus’s 2022 score for environmental health was 51.1 earning them a 52nd place. The second component of EPI is Ecosystem vitality – reflecting the performance in the domains of biodiversity and habitat, ecosystem services, fisheries, forests, climate change mitigation, agriculture, and water resources. Belarus’s ecosystem vitality performance was in 2022 substantially better with a score of 55.4, earning Belarus a 41st place. However, the last component of EPI – climate change mitigation efforts, were evaluated as insufficient for Belarus. The country scored only 39.6 in this regard, equivalent to a 94th place.
Reasons for Belarus’s Decline in Environmental Rankings
The recent stagnation and negative trend observed for Belarus across these global environmental rankings warrant an inquiry into the causes of such developments. Plausibly, these are a combination of insufficient effort to address preexisting environmental challenges and consequences from more recent economic and institutional shocks.
Preexisting Environmental Challenges
One of the main examples of preexisting economic challenges is the continued dominance on imported fossil fuels in the energy sector, low diversification of energy suppliers, and only a marginal share of renewables. According to the National Statistical Committee of the Republic of Belarus, the country belongs to the top-20 most energy-dependent countries in the world. In 2020 the share of energy imports to gross consumption made up 83.7 percent, with around 85 percent of these resources imported from a single supplier: Russia (Internation Energy Agency, 2021). The share of primary energy production from renewable energy sources in the gross energy resources consumption continues to be low (7.8 percent in 2020 vs. 5.6 percent in 2015).
Another challenge has to do with the implementation and enforcement of environmental legislation. Belarus has recently developed and extended its legal framework in environmental sustainability. For instance The National strategy of sustainable development for the Republic of Belarus till 2035, was approved in 2020 and the National action plan for the development of a “green” economy in the Republic of Belarus for 2021-2025 was approved in 2021. The first document outlines the general plan for sustainable development in Belarus; the latter sets 11 priorities for the green economy in the country, including the promotion of green financing and creation of smart and energy-efficient cities, climate change mitigation and adaptation to climate change, education and social engagement.
However, the legislation falls short when it comes to practical implementation of the declared goals and mechanisms. For example, virtually no public financing has been allocated for these purposes and other sources of financing are not specified. Also, the National action plan contains only a general reference to the possibility of attracting extrabudgetary funds, foreign financial resources, or other sources.
Economic and Political Shocks
Recent political and economic crises have also had a negative impact on the environmental sustainability in Belarus.
One can begin by considering the substantial, though potentially unintended, adverse effects of sanctions – imposed in response to the widely contested validity of the 2020 elections and Belarus’s involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine. While it wasn’t their main objective, the sanctions led to the suspension of green projects and initiatives, supported by international organizations such as the World Bank and other UN programs, the EU and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, IMF etc., as well as international investments into Belarus. Funding was suspended for several energy efficiency projects and other green initiatives in Belarus, and for projects promoting sustainable environmental practices, energy efficiency, and clean water access – aimed at reducing Belarus’s carbon footprint and enhancing renewable energy capacity.
The political crisis also led to Belarus’s withdrawal from the Aarhus Convention in 2022. The UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters of 1998 outlines every person’s right to a healthy and sustainable environment which includes access to justice, participation, and information. The Aarhus Convention guarantees legal protection to people exercising these rights. Belarus’s withdrawal from the Aarhus Convention has increased the likelihood of being prosecuted for environmental activism, thereby undermining civil society’s involvement in environmental decisions and practices. For example, the Belarusian Civil Society Report on Sustainable development goals implementation (2022) mentions the dangers of publicity and resulting loss of funding for local initiatives concerning sustainable consumption practices.
Another adverse consequence of the political crisis was the massive explicit liquidation of ecological NGOs in the country, accompanied by self-liquidations. This negatively impacted civil society engagement into ecological matters in Belarus.
Conclusion: Addressing Belarus’s Environmental Decline
In recent years, Belarus has worsened its position in three major global environmental rankings, the SDG index, the CCPI and the EPI.
In this policy brief, we have outlined these declines and highlighted how they are linked to a combination of preexisting dependencies and recent economic and political developments.
The continued reliance on fossil fuel imports, insufficient renewable energy integration, and problems with enforceability and implementation of green agendas have collectively contributed to these developments. Additionally, the suspension of international projects and investment in the environmental sphere as a result of sanctions, Belarus’s withdrawal from the Aarhus Convention and the massive, forced liquidation or self-liquidation of ecological NGOs has further aggravated the situation.
To enhance its sustainable development, Belarus should focus on boosting renewable energy use and diversify its energy supply. This includes enforcing stricter environmental laws and reconnecting with global environmental agreements (such as the Aarhus Convention). Additionally, Belarus should incentivize research in green technologies and encourage government and private sector collaboration on environmental initiatives. Well-funded, comprehensive climate action plans with clear targets for emission reductions and renewable energy adoption must be developed and implemented. It’s also vital for Belarus to acknowledge and collaborate with environmental NGOs and actively involve the community in addressing the environmental decline through sustainability decisions and initiatives.
References
- Belarusian Civil Society Report on Sustainable Development Goals Implementation: Trends since 2016. Vilnius: 2022 — 112 pages. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/belarus/19382.pdf
- Block, S., Emerson, J. W., Esty, D. C., de Sherbinin, A., Wendling, Z. A. (2024). 2024 Environmental Performance Index. New Haven, CT: Yale Center for Environmental Law & Policy
- Burck, J., Uhlich, T., Bals, C., Höhne, N., Nascimento, L., Kumar, C.H., Bosse, J., Riebandt, M., Pradipta, G. (2023). ‘Monitoring Climate Mitigation Efforts of 63 Countries plus the EU – covering more than 90% of the Global Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Bonn: Germanwatch
- International Energy Agency. (2021). Belarus Energy Profile. Retrieved from: https://iea.blob.core.windows.net/assets/a9233b70-ee3e-4a0c-8cde-7a174760b3e2/BelarusEnergyProfile.pdf
- Sachs, J.D., Lafortune, G., Fuller, G., Drumm, E. (2023). Implementing the SDG Stimulus. Sustainable Development Report 2023. Paris: SDSN, Dublin: Dublin University Press, 2023. 10.25546/102924.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
About BEROC
BEROC promotes a market economy in Belarus through research, education, and public dialogue. It conducts academic and policy research, organizes educational programs, and fosters collaboration between Belarusian and international economists. BEROC is part of a research network including SITE (Stockholm), BICEPS (Riga), CEFIR (Moscow), CenEA (Szczecin) and KSE/KEI (Kiev).
To read more policy briefs published by BEROC, visit the Institute’s page on the FREE Network’s website.
A Gender Perspective on Financing for Development
Gender equality should be considered a global public good due to its extensive benefits for both society and the environment. Investing in gender equality as a global public good necessitates a coordinated international effort, which should be a focal point in discussions on the future of development financing. The upcoming Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development (FfD) in 2025 in Madrid, Spain, provides a crucial opportunity to assess the progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and allow countries to refine their strategies. However, recent background documents lack an explicit focus on opportunities for advancing gender equality, which was also inadequately addressed in the Addis Ababa Action Agenda formulated at the previous FfD conference in 2015. This brief is based on the first of a series of roundtables, organized by the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) at Brookings, aimed at providing inputs on this critical topic in the lead-up to the Madrid conference.
Financing for development relies on three main pillars: domestic resource mobilization; development assistance; and other sources of international financing. The latter category includes both private and public sources that emerge in response to the need for a global safety net and social protection system, especially in light of increasing risks from pandemics and climate-related shocks. This policy brief is an attempt to highlight how gender considerations may integrate into each of these pillars. It builds on insights from the first Center for Sustainable Development roundtable, discussing this important issue in preparation for the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development in 2025.
Domestic Resource Mobilization
Fiscal policy plays a critical role in addressing gender gaps, particularly in low-income economies with limited fiscal space. Fiscal policies, including tax systems and public spending, must be designed to consider their gender-specific impacts. For the spending side, several initiatives are promoting tools like gender responsive budgeting, as has been recently discussed in a FROGEE policy paper by Anisimova et al. 2023, on the case of Ukraine.
One key area caregiving services. Caregiving, whether for children, the elderly, or other dependents, disproportionately affects women (see another FREE Network brief by Akulava et al. 2021) and remains largely invisible in economic policies. Many countries, especially outside of higher-income economies, lack universal caregiving services and infrastructure. This sector is significant for economic development and resilience, especially in the context of climate change, which is expected to increase the demands on caregiving due to displacement and health-related challenges. Therefore, integrating care into fiscal policy discussions is not only about gender equality but also about economic resilience and climate adaptation.
To address unpaid care work effectively, it is necessary to integrate care into public finance systems. This can involve developing public caregiving infrastructure and services that support both paid and unpaid caregivers. One first step in this direction would be the monitoring of household time-budgets, to start understanding and analyzing the supply of caregiving services that currently is largely undocumented.
Another policy area crucial for supporting women are social protection policies. In particular policies such as parental leave and childcare support can help reduce gender disparities in the labor market (see examples in the FREE Network brief by Campa, 2024). By providing a safety net, social protection policies enable women to participate more fully in economic activities without the constant threat of financial insecurity.
A specific challenge of the developing world in this respect is the fact that many women work in the informal sector and thereby lack access to social security benefits, leaving them vulnerable during economic hardships. Economic development alone does not solve this issue, as even many developed and wealthy countries lack comprehensive social protection systems. Therefore, a specific effort is needed to develop inclusive social protection systems that cover informal workers, ensuring women have access to benefits such as pensions, healthcare, and unemployment insurance.
Much less discussed is the integration of gender concerns in the taxation side of fiscal policy. Progressive taxation, where tax rates increase with higher income levels, is particularly beneficial for women, who are overrepresented in lower income quintiles. A progressive tax system can thus, besides helping redistribute wealth more equitably, also support gender equality.
Effective tax administration is crucial for improving compliance and maximizing revenue collection. However, it is particularly important in this context to design tax systems that minimize the compliance burden on low-income and informal sector workers, many of whom are women. This can be achieved by simplifying tax procedures and providing support for small and micro enterprises to navigate the tax system. The potential of digital tax systems is significant in this regard (Okunogbe, 2022). Digitalization can streamline tax collection, reduce administrative costs, and improve compliance. However, there are challenges associated with digital tax systems, particularly in ensuring accessibility for all citizens. Women, especially those in rural areas and with lower literacy levels, may face significant barriers in accessing and utilizing digital tax systems. Therefore, while digitalization offers many benefits, it must be implemented in a way that is inclusive and equitable. This includes providing digital literacy training and ensuring that digital tax platforms are user-friendly and accessible to all segments of the population.
Health taxes, such as those on tobacco, alcohol, and sugar-sweetened beverages, may also play a role in promoting gender equity. These taxes help reduce consumption of harmful products, which are disproportionately consumed by men and heavily affect household budgets. By discouraging the use of such products, health taxes can redirect household spending towards more beneficial areas, such as education and healthcare, which are often prioritized by women.
Moreover, health taxes can generate significant revenue that can be reinvested in gender-responsive public spending. For instance, funds raised from health taxes can be allocated to healthcare services, including reproductive health and maternal care, which directly benefit women. Additionally, excise taxes on harmful products address externalities, improving overall public health and reducing the burden on women who often provide unpaid health care.
Broader Sources of Financing for Social Services
The increasing risks from pandemics, climate-related shocks, food insecurity, and other economic shocks of a global nature highlight the need for a global safety net and social protection system. This in turn raises additional demand for effective financing for social services. One area in which new sources of international funding can be found is the emerging global infrastructure for climate finance.
Climate Finance and Gender Equality
Climate finance presents a unique opportunity to address gender equality, particularly in the context of climate adaptation and mitigation strategies. Due to (among others) resource constraints, unequal land ownership and unevenly distributed family responsibilities, women are often more vulnerable to climate impacts. Integrating gender considerations into climate adaptation and mitigation strategies ensures women are supported in building resilience.
One key approach is to use climate finance to promote economic diversification for women, especially in sectors like agriculture, where they play a significant role. For example, providing female farmers with access to capital, training, and resources to adopt climate-resilient agricultural practices can improve their economic security and reduce their vulnerability to climate shocks. This includes supporting transitions to sustainable farming methods, such as crop diversification, agroforestry, and improved irrigation techniques.
Additionally, climate finance can support the development of climate-resilient infrastructure that benefits women. This includes investments in clean energy, water management systems, and transportation networks that are essential for their daily activities and livelihoods. Ensuring that women have access to and can benefit from these infrastructures is crucial for their overall well-being and economic empowerment.
Women can play a pivotal role in natural resource management and environmental conservation. Research has shown that involving women in the management of natural resources, such as forests and water bodies, may lead to more sustainable and equitable outcomes. Women tend to prioritize long-term sustainability and community benefits, which can enhance the effectiveness of conservation efforts (see Agarwal, 2010. For a more nuanced view, see Meinzen-Dick, Kovarik and Quisumbing, 2014).
Climate finance can be used to support initiatives that empower women in natural resource management. This includes providing training and capacity-building programs that equip women with the knowledge and skills needed to manage resources effectively. Additionally, creating platforms for women to participate in decision-making processes related to environmental conservation ensures that their perspectives and needs are considered.
Innovative financing mechanisms can significantly enhance resources available for gender equality initiatives. Several potential sources of finance include Special Drawing Rights (SDRs), currency transaction taxes, and carbon taxes. Revenues generated from these sources can be directed towards climate and gender initiatives, such as supporting women’s participation in the green economy, funding renewable energy projects that benefit women, and investing in climate adaptation measures that protect vulnerable communities.
Development Assistance
Historically, development assistance explicitly targeted to gender equality initiatives has been insufficient. This has changed over time, but the overall financial support remains inadequate. Current ODA (Official Development Assistance) for gender equality often overestimates the actual financial support to such initiatives because it relies heavily on intention-based data rather than results-based financing. This means that the reported figures reflect commitments to gender-related projects without necessarily demonstrating their effectiveness or outcomes. As a result, the true impact of this funding for gender equality is difficult to ascertain.
In principle, development assistance should contribute to gender equality even beyond explicit targeting, simply through improving general economic conditions and generating opportunities. Economic development, after all, is good for gender equality (Duflo, 2012). The effectiveness of development assistance in promoting gender equality is however severely understudied, as discussed in Berlin et al. (2024) (and in a policy brief by Perrotta Berlin, Olofsgård and Smitt Meyer, 2023). We know that development assistance has a slight positive impact, and that gender-targeted aid projects tend to show somewhat larger impacts. But to learn more a more systematic reporting of donor activities is needed. This in particular when it comes to gender markers, i.e. the labeling of specific projects and programs as gender-oriented, that as of now are voluntary.
The effectiveness of gender-focused aid also heavily depends on local cultural dynamics and existing community norms. In some cases, aid aimed at improving economic opportunities for women can lead to negative reactions from men, a phenomenon known as backlash. Therefore, understanding and addressing these local cultural dynamics is crucial when designing and implementing gender-focused aid interventions.
Another critical aspect is the allocation of gender-targeted aid. It is essential to ensure that aid reaches the areas and communities where it is most needed. This requires a granular understanding of local needs and conditions, which is often lacking in broad, country-level data. More precise, geocoded data on aid distribution can help ensure that resources are allocated effectively and equitably. Improving the quality and granularity of data is also vital for monitoring and evaluating the impact of development assistance on gender equality. Current data collection efforts often fall short, lacking detailed, disaggregated information necessary for comprehensive analysis. National statistical agencies need more funding and support to collect this data, which is critical for understanding and addressing gender disparities.
Conclusions and Policy Recommendations
Advancing gender equality contributes to improved health outcomes, economic growth, and social stability. Moreover, gender equality plays a crucial role in addressing global challenges such as climate change, peacebuilding, and sustainable development. Therefore, it should be considered a global public good.
Investing in gender equality as a global public good requires a coordinated international effort. This includes mobilizing resources from various sources, including governments, international organizations, and the private sector. By recognizing the intrinsic value of gender equality and its contribution to global well-being, the international community can prioritize and allocate resources more effectively.
The discussion in this brief aims to highlight key areas that require focused efforts if the global community is to leverage gender equality to make progress toward the SDGs. In summary, enhanced data quality, integrated policies, innovative financing solutions, and gender-inclusive leadership are critical components of a strategy aimed at achieving lasting and meaningful progress in gender equality as well as broad sustainable development.
References
- Agarwal, B. (2010). Does women’s proportional strength affect their participation? Governing local forests in South Asia. World development 38(1), 98-112.
- Anisimova, A., Perrotta Berlin, M., Bosnic; M., Campa, P. Mych, M. Oczkowska, M. and Shapoval, N. (2023). Rebuilding Ukraine: the Gender Dimension of the Reconstruction Process. FREE Network Policy Paper.
- Akulava, M., Babych, Y., Griogryan, A., Iarovskyi, P., Keshelava, D., Khachatryan, K., Król, A., Mikhailova, T., Mzhavanadze, G., Oczkowska, M., Pluta, A., Shpak, S. (2021). Global gender gap in unpaid care: why domestic work still remains a woman’s burden. FREE Network Policy Brief.
- Perrotta Berlin, M., Bonnier, M., Olofsgård, A. (2024). Foreign Aid and Female Empowerment. The Journal of Development Studies, 60:5, 662-684, DOI: 10.1080/00220388.2023.2284665
- Perrotta Berlin, M., Olofsgård, A., Smitt Meyer, C. (2023) Does Foreign Aid Foster Female Empowerment?. FREE Network Policy Brief
- Campa, P. (2024). What Is the Evidence on the Swedish “Paternity Leave” Policy?. FREE Network Policy Brief
- Duflo, E. (2012). Women empowerment and economic development. Journal of Economic Literature, 50(4), 1051–1079. doi:10.1257/jel.50.4.1051.
- Meinzen-Dick, R., Kovarik, C., Quisumbing A., R. (2014). Gender and sustainability. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 39: 29-55.
- Okunogbe, O., Pouliquen, V. (2022). Technology, taxation, and corruption: evidence from the introduction of electronic tax filing. American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 14.1: 341-372.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Nuclear Energy Renaissance: Powering Sweden’s Climate Policy
Sweden’s Nuclear Energy Expansion: Is It the Key to Net-Zero Emissions by 2045?
The Swedish government has placed nuclear energy at the forefront of its climate policies, aiming for two new reactors to be operational by 2035 and a total of ten new reactors by 2045. This policy brief explores whether the large-scale expansion of nuclear energy in Sweden is an environmentally and economically viable solution to achieve the nation’s goal of net-zero emissions by 2045. To assess this, we examine three critical factors: potential emission reductions, the cost-effectiveness of nuclear power, and the feasibility of the proposed construction timelines.
As a case study, we compare Sweden’s approach to nuclear energy with the successful nuclear build-out in France during the 1970s. France significantly reduced its carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions while reaping economic benefits, with an average reactor construction time of about six years. However, the situation in Sweden’s nuclear energy sector today differs from France in the 1970s. Sweden already has a low-carbon electricity grid, and the costs of alternative zero-carbon energy sources, such as wind and solar, have dropped considerably. Additionally, the construction costs and timelines for nuclear reactors in Sweden have increased compared to historical norms.
Thus, while nuclear energy in Sweden may contribute to modest emission reductions, the abatement costs are high, and reactor construction is expected to take much longer—up to two or three times longer than France’s build-out. This raises questions about whether Sweden’s nuclear expansion can effectively support the country’s ambitious climate goals.
A Renewed Focus on Nuclear Energy
When the current government in Sweden, led by Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson, came into power in 2022, they swiftly made changes to Sweden’s environment and climate policies. The Ministry of Environment was abolished, transport fuel taxes were reduced, and the energy policy objective was changed from “100 percent renewable” to “100 percent fossil free”, emphasizing that nuclear energy was now the cornerstone in the government’s goal of reaching net zero emissions (Government Office 2023, Swedish Government 2023). This marked a new turn in Sweden’s relationship with nuclear energy: from the construction of four different nuclear power plants in the 1970s – of which three remain operational today – to the national referendum on nuclear energy in 1980, where it was decided that no new nuclear reactors should be built and that existing reactors were to be phased-out by 2010 (Jasper 1990).
Today’s renewed focus on nuclear energy, especially as a climate mitigation policy tool is, however, not unique to Sweden. As of 2022, the European Commission labels nuclear reactor construction as a “green investment”, the US has included production tax credits for nuclear energy in their 2023 climate bill the Inflation Reduction Act, and France’s President Macron is pushing for a “nuclear renaissance” in his vision of a low-carbon future for Europe (Gröndahl 2022; Bistline, Mehrotra, and Wolfram 2023; Alderman 2022).
France As a Case Study
In the 1970s, France conducted an unprecedented expansion of nuclear energy, which offers valuable insights for Sweden’s contemporary nuclear ambitions. Relying heavily on imported oil for their energy needs, France enacted a drastic shift in energy policy following the 1973 oil crisis. In the subsequent decade, France ordered and began the construction of 51 new nuclear reactors. The new energy policy – dubbed the Messmer Plan – was summarized by the slogan: “All electric, all nuclear” (Hecht 2009).
To support the expansion of new reactors, the French government made use of loan guarantees and public financing (Jasper 1990). A similar strategy has recently been proposed by the Swedish government, with suggested loan guarantees of up to 400 billion kronor (around $40 billion) to support the construction of new reactors (Persson 2022).
France’s Emissions Reductions and Abatement Costs
To make causal estimates of the environmental and economic effects of France’s large-scale expansion of nuclear energy, we need a counterfactual to compare with. In a recent working paper – titled Industrial Policy and Decarbonization: The Case of Nuclear Energy in France – I, together with Jared Finnegan from University College London, construct this counterfactual as a weighted combination of suitable control countries. These countries resemble France’s economy and energy profile in the 1960s and early 1970s, however, they did not push for nuclear energy following the first oil crisis. Our weighted average comprises five European countries: Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Portugal, and Germany, with falling weights in that same order.
Figure 1 depicts per capita emissions of CO2 from electricity and heat production in France and its counterfactual – ‘synthetic France’ – from 1960 to 2005. The large push for nuclear energy led to substantial emission reductions, an average reduction of 62 percent, or close to 1 metric ton of CO2 per capita, in the years after 1980.
Figure 1. CO2 emissions from electricity and heat in France and synthetic France, 1960-2005.
Andersson and Finnegan (2024).
Moreover, Figure 1 shows that six years elapsed from the energy policy change until emission reductions began. This time delay matches the average construction time of around six years (75 months on average) for the more than 50 reactors that were constructed in France following the announcement of the Messmer Plan in 1974.
Table 1. Data for abatement cost estimates.
Andersson and Finnegan (2024).
Lastly, these large and relatively swift emission reductions in France were achieved at a net economic gain. Table 1 lists the data used to compute the average abatement cost (AAC): the total expenses incurred for the new policy (relative to the counterfactual scenario), divided by the CO2 emissions reduction.
The net average abatement cost of -$20 per ton of CO2 is a result of the lower cost of electricity production (here represented by the levelized cost of electricity (LCOE)) of new nuclear energy during the time-period, compared to the main alternative, namely coal, – the primary energy source in counterfactual synthetic France. LCOE encompasses the complete range of expenses incurred over a power plant’s life cycle, from initial construction and operation to maintenance, fuel, decommissioning, and waste handling. Accurately calculated, LCOE provides a standardized metric for comparing the costs of energy production across different technologies, countries, and time periods (IEA 2015).
Abatement Costs and Timelines Today
Today, more than 50 years after the first oil crisis, many factors that made France’s expansion of nuclear energy a success are markedly different. For example, the cost of wind and solar energy – the other two prominent zero-carbon technologies – has plummeted (IEA 2020). Further, construction costs and timelines for new nuclear reactors in Europe have steadily increased since the 1970s (Lévêque 2015).
Figure 2 depicts the LCOE for the main electricity generating technologies between 2009 and 2023 (Bilicic and Scroggins 2023). The data is for the US, but the magnitudes and differences between technologies are similar in Europe. There are two important aspects of this figure. First, after having by far the highest levelized cost in 2009, the price of solar has dropped by more than 80 percent and is today, together with wind energy, the least-cost option. Second, the cost of nuclear has steadily increased, contrary to how technology cost typically evolves over time, meriting nuclear power the “a very strange beast” label (Lévêque, 2015, p. 44). By 2023, new nuclear power had the highest levelized cost of all energy technologies.
Regarding the construction time of nuclear reactors, these have steadily increased in both Europe and the US. The reactor Okiluoto 3 in Finland went into commercial operation last year but took 18 years to construct. Similarly, the reactor Flamanville 3 in France is still not finished, despite construction beginning 17 years ago. The reactors Hinkley Point C in the UK were initiated in 2016 and, after repeated delays, are projected to be ready for operation in 2027 at the earliest (Lawson 2022). Similarly, in the US, construction times have at least doubled since the first round of reactors were built. These lengthened constructions times are a consequence of stricter safety regulations and larger and more complex reactor designs (Lévêque, 2015). If these average construction times of 12-18 years are the new norm, Sweden will, in fact, not have two new reactors in place by 2035. Further, it would need to begin construction rather soon if the goal of having ten new reactors by 2045 is to be achieved.
Figure 2. Levelized Cost of Electricity, 2009-2023.
Source: Bilicic and Scroggins (2023).
Sweden’s Potential Emission Reductions
The rising costs and extended construction times for new reactors are notable concerns, yet the crucial measure of Sweden’s new climate policy is its capacity to reach net zero emissions across all sectors. Figure 3 depicts per capita emissions of CO2 from electricity and heat production in Sweden and OECD countries between 1960 and 2018.
Figure 3. Sweden vs. the OECD average.
Source: IEA (2022).
In 2018, the OECD’s per capita CO2 emissions from electricity and heat averaged slightly over 2 metric tons. In comparison, Sweden’s per capita emissions at 0.7 metric tons are low and represent only 20 percent of total per capita emissions. Hence, the potential for substantial emission cuts through nuclear expansion is limited. By contrast, Sweden’s transport sector, with CO2 emissions more than two times larger than the emissions from electricity and heat, presents a greater chance for impactful reductions. Yet, current policies of reduced transport fuel taxes are likely to increase emissions. The electrification of transportation could leverage the benefits of nuclear energy for climate mitigation, but broader policies are then needed to accelerate the adoption of electric vehicles.
Conclusion: Sweden’s Nuclear Energy Renaissance and Its Impact on Climate Policy
As Sweden rewrites its energy and climate policies, nuclear energy is placed front and center – a position it has not held since the 1970s. Yet, while nuclear energy may experience a renaissance in Sweden, it will not be the panacea for reaching net zero emissions the current government is hoping for. Expected emission reductions will be modest, abatement costs will be relatively high and, if recent European experiences are to be considered an indicator, the aspirational timelines are likely to be missed.
Considering these aspects, it’s imperative for Sweden to adopt a broader mix of climate policies to address sectors such as transportation – responsible for most of the country’s emissions. Pairing the nuclear ambitions with incentives for an accelerated electrification of transportation could enhance the prospects of achieving net zero emissions by 2045.
References
- Alderman, L. (2022). France Announces Major Nuclear Power Buildup. The New York Times. February 10, 2022.
- Andersson, J. and Finnegan, J. (2024). Industrial Policy and Decarbonization: The Case of Nuclear Energy in France. Working Paper.
- Bilicic, G. and Scroggins, S. (2023). 2023 Levelized Cost of Energy+. Lazard.
- Bistline, J., Mehrotra, N. and Wolfram, C. (2023). Economic Implications of the Climate Provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. Tech. rep., National Bureau of Economic Research.
- Government Office. (2023). De första 100 dagarna: Samarbetsprojekt klimat och energi. Stockholm, January 25, 2023.
- Gröndahl, M-P. (2022). Thierry Breton: ’Il faudra investir 500 milliards d’euros dans les centrales nucléaires de nouvelle génération’. Le Journal du Dimanche January 09, 2022.
- Hecht, G. (2009). The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. MIT Press.
- IEA. (2015). Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2015 Edition. International Energy Agency. Paris.
- IEA. (2020). Projected Costs of Generating Electricity: 2020 Edition. International Energy Agency. Paris.
- IEA. (2022). Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Energy (2022 Edition). International Energy Agency. Paris.
- Jasper, J. M. (1990). Nuclear politics: Energy and the state in the United States, Sweden, and France, vol 1126. Princeton University Press.
- Lawson, A. (2022). Boss of Hinkley Point C blames pandemic disruption for 3bn delay. The Guardian. May 20, 2022.
- Lévêque, F. (2015). The economics and uncertainties of nuclear power. Cambridge University Press.
- Persson, I. (2022). Allt du behöver veta om ’Tidöavtalet. SVT Nyheter. 14 October, 2022.
- Swedish Government. (2023). Regeringens proposition 2023/24:28 Sänkning av reduktionsplikten för bensin och diesel. State Documents, Sweden. Stockholm, October 12, 2023.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Insights and Research Shared at the 2023 FREE Network Retreat
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat, an annual face-to-face event for members of the FREE Network, gathered its representatives to share and exchange research ideas and to discuss its institutes’ respective work and joint efforts within the Network. An academic session highlighted multiple overarching areas of interest and opportunities for research collaboration and included a plenary session on topics ranging from theoretical underpinning of Vladimir Putin’s regime to climate change beliefs and to consumer behaviour in credit markets. A session addressing the respective institute’s work during the last year also demonstrated the importance and relevance of the FREE Network’s joint initiatives on gender, democracy and media, and climate change and environment: FROGEE, FROMDEE and FREECE. This brief gives a short outline of the plenary session and an overview of some further topics covered during the conference.
The Academic Day
The Academic Day consisted partly of a plenary session and partly of an academic session. The academic session was outlined to demonstrate the wide spectrum of research interests within the network and to promote and highlight the opportunities for research collaboration. Designed as a series of poster sessions, each organized around a common research theme, it allowed for an exchange of ideas between presenting researchers and the audience while displaying the overlap of the various research interests across the institutes. At the same time, the poster session combined the broad range of topics within 10 overarching subjects (trade, gender, migration and education, public economics, energy, labor, political economy and development, macro, conflict, and theory and auctions).
The plenary session further illustrated the wide variety of topics the FREE Network researchers’ work on. During the plenary session, three distinguished presentations were held, summarized in what follows.
“Why Did Putin Invade Ukraine? – A Theory of Degenerate Autocracy”
Firstly, Konstantin Sonin, Professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, gave a presentation of his working paper (with Georgy Egorov, Northwestern University) in which the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine is explained through a theoretical framework on dictators’ decision-making in degenerate autocracies.
Sonin outlined how the beliefs about Ukraine in Kremlin, prior to the invasion, were factually wrong. For example, Kremlin believed that Ukraine, despite plenty of facts pointing in the opposite direction, lacked a stable government and had an incapable army. Further, it was believed that the US and Europe wouldn’t care about Ukraine and that Russian troops would be welcomed as liberators – the latter exemplified by the fact that Russia sent police and not the army during the first phase of the invasion. He also stressed that the decision to invade Ukraine is likely to have disastrous consequences for Vladimir Putin, his regime, and for Russia as a whole. This is, however, not the first example of a disastrous decision made by a leader of an autocratic regime, leading up to the question: What explains such choices that should not rationally have been made? And how can leaders make them in highly institutionalized environments where they are surrounded by councils and advisors who are supposed to possess the best expertise?
The model presented by Sonin assumes a leader in such highly institutionalized environment that wishes to stay in power and whose decisions are based on input from subordinates. The subordinates differ in level of their expertise and the leader thus chooses the quality of advice that he receives through his choice of subordinates. In turn, while giving advice to the leader, the subordinate considers two factors: the vulnerability of the leader and their own prospects should the leader fall. In equilibrium there is a tradeoff as competent subordinates are also less loyal (since a more competent person might know when to switch alliances and have better prospects if the regime changes).
The leader also has access to repression as an instrument. Repression decreases his changes to be overthrown but raises the stakes for a potential future power struggle, as a leader with a history of repression is more likely to be repressed by his successor.
This interaction creates a feedback loop. If a dictator chooses repression, he feels more endangered, and he then chooses a more loyal subordinate who is less likely to deceive him for personal gain under a potential new regime. However, this leads to the appointment of less competent subordinates whereafter the information that flows to the leader becomes less and less reliable – as illustrated by Kremlin’s beliefs about Ukraine prior to the war.
There are three types of paths in equilibrium, Sonin explained; 1. “stable autocracy”, with leaders altering in power and choosing peaceful paths without repressions 2. “degenerate autocracy” – where the incumbent and opponent first replace each other peacefully and then slide into the repression-based change of power (until one of them dies and the story repeats), and 3. “consecutive degenerate autocracy” – where each power struggle is followed by repression.
Concluding his presentation, Sonin highlighted that in a degenerate autocracy such as Russia, individual decisions by the leader are rarely crucial due to the high level of institutionalization. However, as shown by the model, the leader is inevitably faced with a situation where he is surrounded by incompetent loyalists feeding him bad intel and setting him up to make disastrous decisions – most recently displayed in Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine.
“Facing the Hard Truth: Evidence from Climate Change Ignorance”
Pamela Campa, Associate Professor at Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics, gave the conference’s second presentation, which detailed her work (with Ferenc Szucz, Stockholm University) on climate change skepticism.
Campa opened her talk with the current paradox regarding climate change, where, in the scientific community there is a strong consensus about the existence of climate change, but in society at large, skepticism is largely prevalent. This can be exemplified by one quarter of the US population not believing in global warming in 2023, and Europeans not believing in the fact that humans are the main driver of climate change.
According to Campa, the key question to answer is therefore “Why does ignorance about climate change persist among the public – in spite of the overwhelming evidence?”. One possible explanation may be a deficit in comprehension; people simply don’t understand the complexity of climate change and thus follow biased media and/ or politicians more or less sponsored by lobbyists. However, research have shown scientifical literacy to be quite uncorrelated with climate change denial, contradicting the above explanation. The second hypothesis, and of focus in the study, instead revolve around the concept of information avoidance. To test the hypothesis that people actively avoid climate change information, the authors key in on coal mining communities in the US having been exposed to negative shocks in the form of layoffs. These communities are of interest given their strong sense of identity and the fact that they are directly affected by the green transition. Arguably, a layoff shock would negatively affect not only their economy, but also pose a threat to their perceived identity. Given the context, it can thus be assumed that these communities to a larger extent would avoid information on climate change and information post-shock to restore the threatened identity.
The authors consider US counties experiencing mass layoff (more than 30 percent of mining jobs lost between 2014 and 2017) as treated counties, finding that in these counties, learning about climate change is 30 to 40 percent lower than in counties having experienced no mass layoffs. To account for the fact that the layoff itself may cause changes in learning, the authors also consider an instrument variable analysis in which gas prices are exploited as instrument for the layoffs – once again displaying the fact that people in affected communities believe climate change to be caused by humans to a lesser extent, when compared to counties in which no mass layoffs had occurred.
Interestingly, when controlling with other industries with somewhat similar characteristics (such as metal mining), the drop in climate change learning disappears, feeding in the notion of “identity-based information avoidance”.
The lack of support for and consensus among the public of the ongoing climate change and its drivers might pose a threat for the green transition as well as reduce personal effort to reduce the carbon footprint, Campa concluded.
“Consumer Credit with Over-Optimistic Borrowers”
In the plenary session’s last presentation, Igor Livshits, Economic Advisor and Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, presented his working paper (with Florian Exler, University of Vienna, James MacGee, Bank of Canada and Michèle Tertilt, Mannheimer University) on consumer credit and borrower’s behaviour.
There has been much debate on whether and how to regulate consumer credit products to limit misuse of credit. In 2009/2010 several initiatives and regulations (such as the 2009 Credit Card Accountability Responsibility and Disclosure Act) were introduced with the aim of protecting consumers and borrowers from arguments that sellers of credit products exploit lack of information and cognitive capacity of borrowers. There is however a lack of evaluation of such arguments and subsequent regulations, which Livshits explained to be the motivation behind the paper.
The paper differentiates between over-optimistic borrowers (behaviour borrowers) and rational borrowers (rationalists). While both types face the same risks, behaviour borrowers are more prone to shocks and are at the same time unaware of these worse risks (i.e., they believe they are rationalists). Focusing on these types of borrowers, the paper introduces a model in which the lenders endogenously price credit based on beliefs about the borrower type. Households decide whether to spend or save and if to file for bankruptcy in an environment in which they are faced with earning shocks and expense shocks.
In this structural model of unsecured lending and default, Livshits finds that behavioral borrowers’ “risky” behaviour negatively affects rationalists since both types are pooled together and, thus rationalists are overpaying to cover for the behaviour borrowers. A calibration of the model also suggests that behavioral borrowers borrow too much and file for bankruptcy too little and too late.
Livshits argued that the model does not provide evidence of the notion that borrowers need protection from lenders, but rather that borrowers need to be protected from themselves. In fact, had behaviour borrowers been made aware of the fact that they are overly optimistic about the actual state of their future incomes, they would borrow 15 percent less.
To address the increased risks behaviour borrowers take at the cost of rationalists, policies such as default made easier, taxation on borrowing, financial literacy efforts and score-dependent borrowing limits could all be considered. Such policies may lower debt and reduce bankruptcy filings but as they may also reduce welfare and exhibit scaling difficulties.
Updates from the Institutes
During the Retreat, the respective institutes shared the previous year’s work, and updates within the FREE Network’s three joint projects were also presented. These go under the acronyms of FROMDEE (Forum for Research on Media and Democracy in Eastern Europe), FREECE (Forum for Research on Eastern Europe; Climate and the Environment) and FROGEE (Forum for Research on Gender Economics in Eastern Europe), and address areas of great relevance in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. Researchers from all FREE Network institutes work on these topics, with the most recent policy paper written in coordination by SITE, KSE and CenEA (with expert Maja Bosnic, Niras International Consulting). The policy paper focuses on the gender dimension of the reconstruction of Ukraine – putting emphasis on the necessity of gender budgeting principles throughout the various parts of reconstruction. An upcoming joint research paper will consider the effects of gasoline price increase on household income across the Network’s countries, written under the FREECE umbrella.
The three themes of gender, media and democracy, and environment and climate are not only purely research topics within the institutes. They also reflect developments and challenges that the institutes to a various extent face in the respective contexts in which they operate. The work focusing on the reconstruction of Ukraine is an excellent example of an area that encompasses all three.
Another example of the relevance of the three themes features prominently in one of the institutes’ most tangible contribution to their respective societies: their education programs. Nataliia Shapoval, Vice President for Policy Research at Kyiv School of Economics (KSE), emphasized how KSE has – amid Russia’s war on Ukraine – managed to greatly expand. Over the past year, KSE has launched 8 new bachelor’s and master’s programs, some of which are directly targeted at ensuring postwar reconstruction competence. On a similar note, Lev Lvovskiy, Academic Director at the Belarusian Research and Outreach Center (BEROC) mentioned the likelihood of next year being able to offer students a bachelor’s program in economics and several business courses in Vilnius – BEROC’S new location. BEROC’s effort in providing quality education in economics to Belarus’ exile youth is considered a fundamental investment in the future of the country – providing a competent leading class capable of installing democracy and fair elections in Belarus once the current regime is gone. The emphasis on education was further highlighted by Salome Gelashvili, Practice Head, Agriculture & rural policy at the International School of Economics Policy Institute (ISET-PI) who not only mentioned the opening of a master’s program in Finance at ISET but also the fact that an increasing number of students who’ve recently graduated from PhD’s abroad are now returning to Georgia. Such investments into education are necessary to counter Russian propaganda in the region all three agreed, emphasizing the need to continually stem Russia’s negative influence in the region. This investment into education is also important to hinder countries from sliding away from democratic values – realized in Belarus and threatening in Georgia.
To further delve into the issues of democratic backsliding, a tendency that has been recently observed not only in the region but also more widely across the globe, FROMDEE will organize an academic conference in Stockholm on October 13th, 2023.
Concluding Remarks
The 2023 FREE Network Retreat provided a great opportunity for the Networks’ participants to jointly take part of new research and to share experiences, opportunities, and knowledge amongst each other. The Retreat also served as reminder of the importance of continuously supporting economic and democratic development, through research, policy work, and networking, in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
List of Presenters
- Konstantin Sonin, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy
- Pamela Campa, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics
- Igor Livshits, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Potential Climate Change Impacts on Women’s Vulnerability in Georgia
Climate change can increase the vulnerability of women to various risks, including natural disasters, food insecurity, water scarcity, and health problems. Women may also face unique challenges in accessing resources and services, which can limit their ability to adapt to a changing climate. Developing countries, with their more traditional gender roles, are even more likely to experience disproportionate impacts of climate change on women, and Georgia is no exception. Thus, the country needs to address this problem through a comprehensive approach which accounts for the social, economic, and environmental factors that contribute to gender inequality.
Introduction
According to Georgia’s fourth national communication report to the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, the negative impacts of climate change on ecosystems and the economy can hinder Georgia’s path toward sustainable development. Therefore, a key focus for the country should be to develop climate-resilient practices and reduce the vulnerability of communities exposed to these impacts.
The climate scenarios in the communication report present a worrying picture of warming trends in the country, mainly due to increased temperatures in the last summer and autumn seasons, as depicted in Figure 1 (MEPA, 2021). Such alterations in weather patterns often lead to glacier retreat, water scarcity, coastal erosion, and biodiversity loss in different regions of Georgia (ibid).
Figure 1. Average summer and winter temperatures in Georgia, 1900-2021.
Source: Climate Change Knowledge Portal (World Bank, 2021).
An increasing body of international research has demonstrated that climate change can have adverse effects on agricultural production, food security, water management, and public health. Furthermore, research has revealed that these effects are not gender-neutral, with women and children being among the most affected groups (World Bank Group, 2021).
Climate Change Impacts on Women – A Georgian Perspective
Women in developing countries like Georgia experience various impacts of climate change, which affect them differently than men. The effects might vary according to region or community, but some common signs can be identified. The main channels through which women are disproportionally affected by climate change are discussed in the following sub-sections.
Health Impacts
Climate change has a significant effect on human health, with women being more vulnerable due to various cultural, social, and economic factors (Sbiroli et al., 2022). In particular, women appear to be more susceptible to infectious diseases and undernutrition, especially in middle and low-income countries (ibid).
Springmann et al. (2016) found that, by 2050, Georgia could experience about 32.36 climate-related deaths per million due to malnutrition caused by a lack of fruits and vegetables in people’s diets and due to increased health complications associated with undernutrition. In Georgia, malnutrition is a significant gender equality concern. According to the Global Nutrition Report, women in Georgia disproportionally experience exposure to undernutrition translated into underweight. Similarly, women represent the majority of Georgians with obesity (26.8 percent, compared to 22.2 percent among men). Both these issues may be further exacerbated by climate change in the future.
Furthermore, in Georgia, women are more likely to care for sick family members. According to Geostat, 31 percent of women who have sick or dependent family members are involved in providing them care, compared to only 15 percent of the men. This puts women at greater risk of exposure to climate change-induced infectious diseases, given that research has demonstrated an increased risk of such diseases worldwide, including in areas in Europe that have climate profiles similar to Georgia (Mora et al., 2022; Gray et al., 2009).
Figure 2. Prevalence of underweight among adults (>18) in Georgia, 2000-2016.
Source: Global Nutrition Report (2023).
Water and Food Scarcity
Climate change is also known to affect food and water supply through changes in agricultural conditions, droughts, and floods. In developing countries as women are often responsible for food and water supply, they are disproportionally affected by water shortages resulting from climate change (Figueiredo & Perkins, 2013). Women in poor rural households in Georgia are likely to face similar challenges.
Women in Georgia also play a crucial role in agriculture (according to Geostat, 47 percent of workers in agricultural holdings were women in 2021). Fluctuations in temperature and precipitation patterns can reduce crop yields, leading to lower income and food insecurity. This may disproportionately affect female farmers, as access to agricultural technologies, land ownership and lack of necessary knowledge and skills are some of the significant barriers for women involved in agriculture in Georgia (Gamisonia, 2015).
Economic Impacts and Access to Resources
One of the main reasons to why women are disproportionally affected by climate change is that their underlying economic conditions are less favourable than men’s (Yadav & Lal, 2018). In 2021, the majority of people outside the labor force were women (65 percent), while men constituted 35 percent (Geostat). It is important to mention that in the same year, only 33 percent of women were employed in Georgia, compared to 49 percent of men. Additionally, the average salary for women was 1056 GEL (813 GEL in the agricultural sector), while men earned an average of 1538 GEL (1006 GEL in the agricultural sector). Finally, although poverty rates among women in Georgia are slightly lower than among men, 17.1 vs. 17.9 percent respectively (absolute poverty rates in 2021), the poverty data does not account for the gender-biased distribution of household resources. Women face larger barriers in obtaining financial resources (collaterals, loans, etc.) than men because they own less property. For different types of property, only 44 percent are owned by at least one woman, according to the National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia. The corresponding number for men is 56 percent. Geostat data further indicates that households headed by men make up 63 percent of the total number of households, whereas households headed by women account for only 37 percent. These unfavorable conditions hinder women’s access to vital information and resources required for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
The discussed impacts may be especially prominent for women in poor rural households. Climate change-induced natural disasters are typically more detrimental for households dependent on agriculture (Dagdeviren et al., 2021), especially subsistence farmers and poor agricultural workers (in particular those without access to technology or resources). In Georgia, women are in majority in both these categories.
Natural Disasters and Displacement
Climate-driven disasters are over 14 times more likely to cause fatalities among women and children than men, according to UNHCR (2022). Additionally, women in agrarian societies impacted by climate change are less likely to use adaptive measures, putting them at higher risk of displacement (Palacios, Sexsmith, Matheu & Gonzalez, 2023). Such risks are also likely to pertain to the rural areas of Georgia.
Georgia’s International Obligations and Policies
In previous decades Georgia has made significant progress when it comes to incorporating gender equality and climate change into the policy agenda. In particular, Georgia follows numerous international legislative initiatives regarding sustainable development, gender equality, and climate change.
Georgia is a party to the Paris Agreement and the Beijing platform (a comprehensive roadmap for women’s rights and empowerment, which lists the problems associated with gender inequality and different strategies to overcome them, signed by Georgia in 1995). It is also a signatory of the Gender Action Plan (GAP), adopted a year after the Paris Agreement to integrate gender into targets and increase effectiveness, fairness, and sustainability.
The updated Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) of Georgia includes a dedicated section on gender and climate change. This section aims to promote gender mainstreaming, encourage equal participation, empower women, build capacity, and develop climate policies that are responsive to gender considerations. Furthermore, the Long-term Low-emission Development Strategies for Paris Agreement parties (including Georgia) has a communication and awareness-raising strategy that seeks to address gender, youth, and people with disabilities in its outreach efforts (United Nations, 2022).
Despite these commitments, Georgia is lagging when it comes to tackling the issues of climate change and gender in coordination. For example, even though Georgia has adopted a Gender Equality Law and Action Plan, it does not address climate change issues. Therefore, municipalities are not required to consider gender aspects of climate change impacts.
Identified Gaps and Policy Recommendations
Despite the number of policies and measures undertaken, unsolved problems hinder the country’s ambition to adhere to gender-mainstreamed climate change-addressed policymaking.
For example, there is a lack of gender-disaggregated data on the impacts of climate change in Georgia, which prevents policymakers from developing targeted strategies to address women’s needs. Therefore, collecting and analyzing disaggregated data with gender-specific impacts in mind is recommended. Additionally, involving women in decision-making and ensuring their participation in climate change efforts is crucial as their unique experiences and perspectives can inform more effective and equitable responses to climate change impacts.
As previously mentioned, climate change in Georgia is expected to exacerbate water and food scarcity, which can disproportionately affect women. Therefore, implementing climate-resilient water management strategies and increasing access to climate-resilient agricultural practices, such as crop diversification and improved irrigation systems, can help increase farm productivity and reduce the adverse impacts of climate change on women.
Furthermore, there is a need to provide women with access to financial resources and services and to address gender-based inequalities that may limit women’s ability to access information and resources necessary for climate change adaptation and mitigation.
Finally, addressing the impacts of climate change on women in Georgia will require a coordinated and sustained effort from a range of stakeholders, including governments, civil society organizations, and local communities, so that women are not left behind in the global effort to address the impacts of climate change.
Conclusion
To effectively address the impacts of climate change on women in Georgia, it is essential to recognize that various social, economic, and cultural factors shape women’s experiences. For example, women in rural areas may face different challenges than women in urban areas; women with few economic means may be disproportionately affected by climate change. Therefore, policies should not only integrate gender-mainstreaming, but also account for these heterogeneities, to ensure that different parties of the society are adequately addressed within the climate change policy agenda.
References
- Dagdeviren, H., Elangovan, A., & Parimalavalli, R. (2021). Climate change, monsoon failures and inequality of impacts in South India. Journal of Environmental Management.
- Figueiredo, P., & Perkins, P. E. (2013). Women and water management in times of climate change: participatory and inclusive processes. Journal of Cleaner Production, 188-194.
- Gamisonia, N. (2015). Climate Change and Women. Heinrich Böll Stiftung.
- Global Nutrition Report. (2023). Global Nutrition Report. https://globalnutritionreport.org/resources/nutrition-profiles/asia/western-asia/georgia/
- Geostat. https://www.geostat.ge/en
- Gray, J. S., Dautel, H., Estrada-Peña, A., Kahl, O., & Lindgren, E. (2009). Effects of Climate Change on Ticks and Tick-Borne Diseases in Europe. National Library of Medicine.
- MEPA. (2021). Fourth National Communication of Georgia to the UNFCCC. Tbilisi: UNDP.
- Mora, C., McKenzie, T., Gaw, I. M., Dean, J. M., Hammerstein, H. v., Knudson, T. A., Franklin, E. C. (2022). Over half of known human pathogenic diseases can be aggravated by climate change. Nature Climate Change.
- National Agency of Public Registry of Georgia. https://www.napr.gov.ge/
- Palacios, H. V., Sexsmith, K., Matheu, M., & Gonzalez, A. R. (2023). Gendered adaptations to climate change in the Honduran coffee sector. Women’s Studies International Forum.
- Sbiroli, E., Geynisman-Tan, J., Sood, N., Maines, B. A., Junn, J. H.-J., & Sorensen, C. (2022). Climate change and women’s health in the United States: Impacts and opportunities. The Journal of Climate Change and Health.
- Springmann, M., Mason-D’Croz, D., Robinson, S., Garnett, T., Godfray, H. C., Gollin, D., Scarborough, P. (2016). Global and regional health effects of future food production under climate change: a modelling study. National Library of Medicine.
- UNHCR. (2022). Gender, Displacement and Climate Change. Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
- United Nations. (2022). Long-term Low-emission Development Strategies. United Nations.
- World Bank Group. (2021). Climate Risk Country Profile: Georgia. World Bank Group.
- World Bank. (2021). Climate Change Knowledge Portal. https://climateknowledgeportal.worldbank.org/country/georgia
- Yadav, S. S., & Lal, R. (2018). Vulnerability of women to climate change in arid and semi-arid regions: The case of India and South Asia. Journal of Arid Environments, 4-17.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Climate Risk Perception and Green Behavior in Belarus
Understanding how people perceive climate risks and what factors influence this perception is important for a shift towards more sustainable consumer behavior and thus a reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. This policy brief presents the results from a survey on the attitudes to climate change and environmentally responsive behavior among the urban Belarusian population aged 18-75. The findings show that 72.7 percent of the respondents consider climate change as a threat to the country in the coming 20 years. This climate risk perception, however, does not fully result in more sustainable consumer behavior in Belarus. The survey also reveals that the mass media, with the exception of the Internet, have no influence on the formation of people’s attitudes toward climate change.
Global warming constitutes one of the major threats to humanity and an obstacle to achieving sustainable development. 72 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions are attributed to households (IPCC, 2022), underlining the importance of individual behavioral changes to tackle global warming.
Acknowledging climate change as a risk is a precondition to shift people’s behavior towards sustainable practices (Le Coq and Paltseva, 2021). Thus, the objective of the study underlying this brief is to analyze whether the population in Belarus considers climate change as a threat, and which factors and media channels might have an effect on such perceptions. Additionally, the brief will explore whether climate change risk perceptions actually translate into more environmentally sustainable consumer behavior.
Climate Change as a Threat
The online-survey was conducted in April, 2022 among the urban population in Belarus aged 18-75. The purpose of the survey was to collect individual data on environmentally responsible behaviors and climate change perceptions. The sample includes 1029 individuals and is representative by age, gender and region. According to the survey, 72.7 percent of the respondents consider climate change as a threat to the country in the coming 20 years.
To explore which demographic and socio-economic variables (e.g., education, age, gender, income, and mass media) influence the perception of climate change as a risk among the Belarusian population, we employ a logistic regression model. The results reveal that gender, personal experience of extreme weather events and exposure to climate change information on the Internet play an important role in forming climate change risk perceptions among Belarusians, as depicted in Table 1.
Table 1. Determinants of Climate Change Risk Perception
Note: Media channels are measured on a 5-point Likert scale where 0 denotes “Don’t use this media”; 1 “never” up until 4, “very often”, answering the question “How often do you come across the information about climate change, environmental problems or sustainable lifestyle on the following media?”. Standard errors are in parentheses, *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05 and * p<0.1
Women are 6.1 percent more likely to consider climate change as a threat than men. This could be due to a higher level of empathy exhibited by women, making them more worried about consequences of extreme weather events and environmental protection and more sensitive to the risk of environmental degradation (Milfont and Sibley, 2016). Respondents with personal experience from, or those who have close persons having suffered significant damage from severe weather events such as floods or violent storms in the past two years, are 25.2 percent more likely to perceive climate change as a risk. Thus, personal experience of severe weather events is one of the main factors that impact climate change risk perception. The literature also confirms that climate beliefs are linked to these experiences (see for instance Spence et al., 2011; Dai et al., 2015; Demski et al., 2017 and Bergquist et al., 2019). Interestingly, out of all types of mass media included in the analysis (TV, newspapers, radio and the Internet), only exposure to environmental information on the Internet makes individuals 5.5 percent more likely to take climate change seriously. This indicates that nowadays people in Belarus get independent analytical and expert information on climate problems mainly from the Internet.
Environmentally Responsible Behavior
The same survey data was used to analyze environmentally responsible behavior among the Belarusian population. Although more than 72 percent of the respondents consider environmental change as a threat, the climate risk perception does not fully project into more sustainable behaviors – even within this subgroup. As illustrated in Figure 1, this belief is very well translated into such environmentally responsible actions as water saving, energy saving, mobility and repairing. The share of people engaged in these activities on a regular basis account for 62-73 percent. These behaviors are however financially beneficial to the practitioner, and may largely be because of economic reasons rather than an effort to minimize the impact on the environment. At the same time, the survey shows that people in Belarus less often engage in such environmentally friendly actions such as waste separation, reduced use of plastic bags or use of own bag when shopping (see Figure 1). These actions are not linked to any financial benefits and are often associated with higher time costs (e.g., waste separation) or loss of convenience (e.g., decreased plastics use). This suggests that environmentally responsible behavior among the Belarusian population is largely determined by external factors, rather than a product of intrinsic care of the environment.
Figure 1. Frequency of Environmentally Responsible Behaviors Among the Respondents who Consider Climate Change as a Risk
Note: Distribution of the answers to the question “Could you please evaluate on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (always) how often you engage in these behaviors for environmental reasons?” Mobility represents walking, biking or using public transportation instead of a car. Repairing means choosing to reuse or repair something (e.g. clothes) rather than to throw it away.
Conclusion
Survey results show that the urban population in Belarus recognizes global warming as a serious problem, with 72.7 percent of the respondents seeing climate change as a threat to the country in the next 20 years. However, these beliefs have not yet fully projected into green consumption behavior.
With this in mind, efforts to shift Belarusians towards environmentally responsive behavior should be strengthened. Endeavors need to be made to raise public awareness of environmental issues and to promote a sustainable lifestyle among the Belarusian population. In particular, and in addition to the Internet, the role of mass media (such as television, radio and print media) to deliver the message on the need for more sustainable consumption and greater involvement in environmentally friendly actions, ought to be increased.
References
- Bergquist, M. et al. (2019). “Experiencing a severe weather event increases concern about climate change”. Frontiers in psychology, 10, 220. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00220
- Dai, J. et al. (2015). “Extreme weather experiences and climate change beliefs in China: An econometric analysis”. Ecological Economics, 116, pp. 310-321. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecolecon.2015.05.001.
- Demski, C. et al. (2017). “Experience of extreme weather affects climate change mitigation and adaptation responses”. Climatic Change, 140, pp. 149–164. doi: 10.1007/s10584-016-1837-4.
- IPCC (2022). “Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change”. [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926.
- Milfont T. and Sibley, C. (2016). “Empathic and social dominance orientations help explain gender differences in environmentalism: A one-year Bayesian mediation analysis”. Personality and Individual Differences, 90, pp. 85 – 88. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2015.10.044.
- Le Coq, C. and Paltseva, E. (2021). “Green Concerns and Salience of Environmental Issues in Eastern Europe”. FREE Policy Brief. https://www.hhs.se/en/about-us/news/site-publications/publications/2021/green-concerns-and-salience-of-environmental-issues-in-eastern-europe/
- Spence, A. et al. (2011). “Perceptions of climate change and willingness to save energy related to flood experience”. Nature climate change, 1, pp. 46-49. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/nclimate1059
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
The Cost of Climate Change Policy: The Case of Coal Miners
The phasing out of coal is considered a key component of the upcoming energy transition. While environmentally appealing, this measure will have a devastating effect on those working in the coal industry. Using the dissolution of the UK coal industry under Margret Thatcher as a natural experiment, we estimate the long run costs of being displaced as a coal miner. We find that within the first year of displacement, earnings fall by 80-90 percent, relative to the earnings of a carefully matched blue-collar manufacturing worker, while the wages of miners who find alternative employment fall by 40 percent. The losses are persistent and remain significant fifteen years after displacement. Our results are considerably above the estimates provided by other studies in the job displacement literature and may serve as a guide for policy makers when aiming for a just energy transition.
The Coal Mining Industry and Global Warming
According to the recent IPCC report, limiting global warming to 2 degrees Celsius requires a near complete and rapid elimination of coal in the global use of energy. Such a drastic measure is bound to have devastating effects on anybody economically linked to and dependent on the coal industry. Our back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests that the closure of the currently 2300 active industrial coal mines would translate into more than 5 million displaced coal miners. In Figure 1 we plot the spatial distribution of coal mines, indicating the locations of the upcoming displacements globally.
Figure 1. Location of industrial coal mines. The seven biggest producers and exporters of coal are marked in green.
Source: SNL Energy Data Set produced by S&P Global.
In a new paper (Rud et al., 2022), we estimate the average loss in the earnings of coal miners who have been displaced following one of the most notorious labor disputes of the 20th century: the dissolution of the coal sector in the UK. When Margaret Thatcher came into power many of the mines were unprofitable (Glyn, 1988). Considering the mines to be ripe for closures, the UK government publicly announced the closure of 20 mines in 1984. After additional information on further closures reached the press, the Union of Miners called for a general strike. The strike lasted for nearly a year and ended with a devastating defeat of the miners. From 1985 and onwards, the closure of mines proceeded at such an incredible pace that the dissolution of the UK coal industry is considered the most rapid in the history of the developed world (Beatty and Fothergill, 1996). As shown in Figure 2, the closures resulted in an equally rapid displacement of miners, from 250 000 employed miners in 1975 to less than 50 000 by 1995.
Figure 2. Coal Mining Employment in the UK 1975-2005
Note: The number on employed miners is collected from National Coal Board (1970-1993) and used in Aragon et al., (2018). The percent of employment shown on the right axis was calculated from the New Earnings Survey, the main data source used in this paper.
The Effects of UK Coal Mine Closures on Miners
At the heart of our empirical analysis is the New Earnings Survey, a longitudinal dataset covering 1 percent of the UK population since 1975. For the period 1979-1995 (marked in gray in Figure 2), among the 25-55 years old and those who were employed by the same mine for at least two consecutive years, we identify 2152 miners who experienced a final separation from a mine. In our baseline specification, these miners are matched to a single manufacturing worker using a large array of observables such as age, gender, hours worked, pre-separation employment and earnings, geographical administrative unit (county), as well as whether their respective wage was determined in a collective agreement. By the nature of the exercise we are unable to match on industry and instead match on detailed occupational information. A variety of other matching procedures suggest our results are robust.
In Figure 3 we plot the estimated differences in the evolution of earnings and wages for four years before, and fifteen years after displacement. The coefficients are estimated conditional on time and individual fixed effects. Due to the normalization of the dependent variable, the estimates should be interpreted as the percentage change relative to pre-displacement values. In Panel A of Figure 3 we show that hourly wages and weekly earnings conditional on employment drop by around 40 percent in the year after displacement and recover only slowly. It should be noted that the losses in earnings conditional on employment are not driven by changes in hours since the two series are close to identical.
In Panel B of Figure 3 we show the effect on earnings taking into account the losses of those who have not been successful in finding alternative employment in another industry. To get to these results we need to make some assumptions since the New Earnings Survey neither includes earnings information on the self-employed, nor on those who are active in the informal sector. Many other studies in the job displacement literature share similar data limitations, so we follow their approach in dealing with these. On the one hand, we assume zero individual earnings for periods without any observed labor earnings in the data, as assumed by Schmieder et al. (2022) and Bertheau et al. (2022). This assumption does not appear too strong since there is some evidence suggesting that ignoring the self-employed only marginally affects the results (Upward and Wright, 2017; Bertheau et al., 2022). On the other hand, we complement our results with an approach inspired by Jacobson (1993) where we keep only individuals who experience positive earnings within four years after displacement. The latter approach provides a more conservative estimate of displacement costs by assuming zero earnings only for individuals who eventually return to work.
Figure 3. The hourly wage and earnings conditional on employment (Panel A), and overall earnings costs of final displacement from a mine (Panel B).
Note: We plot the coefficients of the estimated panel data model with time and individual fixed effects and distributed leads and lags. ”Earnings: come back” refers to the treatment group where we only include those who have positive earnings at some point four years after job loss, and impute periods without employment as zeros. ”Earnings: all zeros” refers to the treatment in which we replace the earnings of any miner with a zero if the miner is not observed for any year, without restrictions.
Interpreting all periods of missing information as zeros, we find the initial losses to be around 90 percent of pre-displacement earnings within the first year after separation, while the more conservative estimates are only slightly lower at around 80 percent in the short run. In the long run, the losses are persistent and remain significantly depressed even fifteen years after displacement. Over the fifteen years after displacement these numbers amount to the miners losing on average between 4 to 6 times of their pre-displacement earnings. This implies that miners only receive 40-60 percent of the present discounted counterfactual earnings.
Our estimates are considerably above those provided by studies in the job displacement literature that focus on mass layoffs. Couch and Placzek (2010), for instance, report initial losses to amount to about 25-55 percent, while Schmeider et al. (2022) find initial earnings losses to be around 30-40 percent. Davis and Wachter (2012) estimate the long-run effects based on US data and find the present discounted earnings losses to be on average 1,7 times the workers’ pre-displacement earnings.
The large estimated individual costs to the displaced miners are likely due to a combination of at least two reasons. First, the complete collapse of the sector forces displaced miners to reallocate and search for another job in other industries, and likely other occupations. Since coal mining is a highly specialized occupation, this greatly reduces miners’ ability to transfer the accumulated human capital to another activity (Beatty and Fothergill, 1996; Samuel, 2016). Second, most coal miners are employed in remote and rural areas where mining is often the main employer, something which remains an issue for current miners around the world (see Figure 1). This feature reduces local economies’ capacity to absorb displaced miners after a mine closure and, due to the need to relocate, greatly increases workers’ job searching costs.
Conclusion
While it is important to globally transition away from the excessive use of fossil fuels, we should keep in mind the devastating effects such transition will end up having on some groups. And while coal miners are particularly vulnerable to the upcoming energy transition, the ramifications do not stop there. Individuals employed in industries linked to the coal industry are likely to also be affected by its dissolution. Moreover, individuals employed in industries providing local services, such as retail stores, restaurants and pubs are likely to experience a significant drop in demand. Thus, the impact of coal mine closures on coal dependent communities typically goes far beyond the displacement of miners (Aragon et al., 2018). The closure of mines will lead to spikes in local unemployment, often unregistered (“hidden”), as well as an exodus of the population. Estimating and accounting for these effects is important if we aim to provide a just energy transition for all.
Attempts have been made to foster economic recovery of affected communities. Regeneration policies have included re-training of local workers, support of small and medium-sized businesses, and investments in local infrastructure, among others. However, their success has been limited and former mining communities remain among the poorest in the UK (Beatty et al., 2007). Preparing a set of policies which will have the capacity to reduce the costs of the transition, as not to repeat the devastating experience of UK coal miners and their communities, is an important task ahead of current policy makers.
References
- Aragon, F., Rud, J. P. and Toews, G. (2018). Resource shocks, employment, and gender: Evidence from the collapse of the UK coal industry. Labour Economics, 52, pp. 54–67.
- Beatty, C. and S. Fothergill. (1996). Labour market adjustment in areas of chronic industrial decline: the case of the UK coalfields. Regional studies, 30(7), pp. 627–640.
- Beatty, C., Fothergill, S. and Powell, R. (2007). Twenty years on: has the economy of the UK coalfields recovered? Environment and Planning A, 39(7), p. 1654.
- Bertheau, A. Maria Acabbi, E., Barceló, C., Gulyas, A., Lombardi, S. and Saggio R. (2022). The unequal consequences of job loss across countries. American Economic Review: Insights. Forthcoming.
- Couch, K. and Placzek, D. (2010). Earnings losses of displaced workers revisited. American Economic Review, 100(1), pp. 572–589.
- Davis, S. and von Wachter, T. (2012). Recessions and the cost of job loss. Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
- Glyn, A. (1988). Colliery results and closures after the 1984–85 coal dispute. Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 50(2), pp. 161–173.
- Jacobson, L., Lalonde, R. and Sullivan, D. (1993). Earnings losses of displaced workers. American Economic Review, 83(4), pp. 685–709.
- Rud, J. P., Simmons, M., Toews, G. and Aragon, F. (2022). Job displacement costs of phasing out coal. IFS Working Paper, 22/37.
- Schmieder, J., von Wachter, T. and Heining, J. (2022). The Costs of Job Displacement over the Business Cycle and Its Sources: Evidence from Germany. Mimeo.
- Upward, R. and Wright, P. (2017). Don’t look down: The consequences of job loss in a flexible labour market. Economica, 2019(86), pp. 166–200.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
The Energy and Climate Crisis Facing Europe: How to Strike the Right Balance
Policymakers in Europe are currently faced with the difficult task of reducing our reliance on Russian oil and gas without worsening the situation for firms and households that are struggling with high energy prices. The two options available are either to substitute fossil fuel imports from Russia with imports from other countries and cut energy tax rates to reduce the impacts on firms and household budgets, or to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels entirely by investing heavily in low-carbon energy production. In this policy brief, we argue that policymakers need to also take the climate crisis into account, and avoid making short-term decisions that risk making the low-carbon transition more challenging. The current energy crisis and the climate crisis cannot be treated as two separate issues, as the decisions made today will impact future energy and climate policies. To exemplify how large-scale energy policy reforms may have long-term consequences, we look at historical examples from France, the UK, and Germany, and the lessons we can learn to help guide us in the current situation.
The war in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions against Russia have led to a sharp increase in energy prices in the EU since the end of February 2022. This price increase came after a year when global energy prices had already surged. For instance, import prices for energy more than doubled in the EU during 2021 due to an unusually cold winter and hot summer, as well as the global economic recovery following the pandemic and multiple supply chain issues. Figure 1 shows that the price of natural gas traded in the European Union has increased steadily since the summer of 2021, with a strong hike in March 2022 following the beginning of the war.
Figure 1. Evolution of EU gas prices, July 2021-May 2022
Source: https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eu-natural-gas
Concerns about energy dependency, towards Russian gas in particular, are now high on national and EU political agendas. An embargo on imports of Russian oil and gas into the EU is currently discussed, but European governments are worried about the effects on domestic energy prices, and the economic impact and social unrest that could follow. Multiple economic analyses argue, however, that the economic effect in the EU of an embargo on Russian oil and gas would be far from catastrophic, with estimated reductions in GDP ranging from 1.2-2.2 percent. But a reduction in the supply of fossil fuels from Russia would need to be compensated with energy from other sources, and possibly supplemented with demand reductions.
In parallel, on April 4th, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report on climate change. One chapter analyses different energy scenarios, and finds that all scenarios that are compatible with keeping the global temperature increase below 2°C involve a strong decrease in the use of all fossil fuels (Dhakal et al, 2022). This reduction in fossil fuel usage over the coming decades is illustrated in red in Figure 2.
It is thus important that, while EU countries try to decrease their dependency on Russian fossil fuels and cushion the effect of energy-related price increases, they also accelerate the transition to a low-carbon economy. And how they manage to balance these short- and long-run objectives will depend on the energy policy decisions they make. For instance, if policymakers substitute Russian oil and gas with increased coal usage and new import terminals for LNG, this can lead to a “carbon lock in” and make the low-carbon transition more challenging. In this policy brief, we analyze what lessons can be drawn from past historical events that lead to large-scale structural changes in energy policy. Events that all shaped our current energy systems and conditions for climate policy.
Figure 2. Four energy scenarios compatible with a 2°C temperature increase by 2100.
Source: IPCC sixth assessment report on Mitigation of Climate Change, chapter 3, p23
Structural Changes in Energy Policy in France, the UK, and Germany
We focus on three “energy policy turning points” triggered by three geopolitical, political or environmental crises: the French nuclear plan triggered by the 1973 oil crisis; the UK early closure of coal mines and the subsequent dash for gas in the 1990s, influenced by the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979; and the German nuclear phase-out triggered by the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe.
In response to the global oil price shock of 1973, France adopted the “Messmer plan”. The aim was to rapidly transition the country away from dependence on imported oil by building enough nuclear capacity to meet all the country’s electricity needs. Two slogans summarised its goals: “all electric, all nuclear”, and “in France, we may not have oil, but we have ideas” (Hecht 2009). The first commissioned plants came online in 1980, and between 1979-1988 the number of reactors in operation in France increased from 16 to 55. As a consequence, the share of nuclear power in the total electricity production rose from 8 to 80 percent, while the share of fossil fuels fell from 65 to 8 percent.
Figure 3. French electricity mix
Source: Data on electricity and heat production in France is provided by the IEA (2022).
In the UK, the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 opened the way for large market-based reform of the energy sector. Thatcher’s plan to close dozens of coal pits triggered a year-long coal miners’ strike in 1984-85. The ruling Conservative party eventually won against the miners’ unions and the coal industry was deeply restructured, with a decrease in domestic employment – not without social costs (Aragon et al, 2018) – and an increase in coal imports. At the same time, the electricity market’s liberalization in the 1990s facilitated the development of gas infrastructure. As an indirect and unintended consequence, when climate change became a prominent issue at the global level in the 2000s, there was no strong pro-coal coalition left in the UK (Rentier et al, 2019). Aided by a portfolio of policies making coal-fired electricity more expensive – a carbon tax in particular – the coal phase-out was relatively easy and fast (Wilson and Staffel, 2018, Leroutier 2022): between 2012 and 2020, the share of coal in the electricity production dropped from 40 to 2 percent.
In 2011, the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe in Japan triggered an early and unexpected phase-out of nuclear energy in Germany. The 2011 “Energiewende” (energy transition) mandated a phase-out of nuclear power plants by 2022, while including provisions to reduce the share of fossil fuel from over 80 percent in 2011 to 20 percent in 2050. The share of nuclear energy in the electricity production in Germany was halved in a decade, from 22 percent in 2010 to 11 percent in 2020. At the same time, the share of renewable energy increased from 13 to 36 percent, and that of natural gas from 14 to 17 percent.
In these three examples, climate objectives were never the main driver of the decision. Nevertheless, in the case of France and the UK, the crisis resulted in an energy sector that is arguably more low-carbon than it would have been without the crisis. Although the German nuclear phase-out was accompanied by large subsidies to renewable energies, its effect on the energy transition is ambiguous: some argue that the reduction in nuclear electricity production was primarily offset by an increase in coal-fired production (Jarvis et al, 2022).
The three crises also had different consequences in terms of dependence on fossil fuel imports. The French nuclear plan resulted in an arguably lower energy dependency on imported fossil fuels. The closure of coal mines in the UK had ambiguous effects on energy security, with an increase in coal imports and the use of domestic gas from the North Sea. Finally, Germany’s nuclear phase-out, combined with the objective of phasing out coal, has been associated with an increase in the use of fossil fuels from Russia: gas imports remained stable between 2011 and 2020, but the share coming from Russia increased by 60 percent over the period. In 2020, Russia stood for 66 percent of German gas imports (Source: Eurostat). Which brings us back to the current war in Ukraine.
The Current Crisis is Different
The context in which the current energy crisis is unfolding is different from the three above-mentioned events in two important ways.
First, scientific evidence on the relationship between fossil fuel use, CO2 emissions and climate damages has never been clearer: we know quite precisely where the planet is heading if we do not drastically reduce fossil fuel use in the coming decade. From recent research in economics, we also know that price signals work and that increased prices on fossil fuels result in lower demand and emission reductions (Andersson 2019; Colmer et al. 2020; Leroutier 2022). High fuel prices can also have long-term impacts on consumption patterns: US commuters that came of driving age during the oil prices of the 70s, when gasoline prices were high, still drive less today (Severen and van Benthem, 2022). The other way around, low fossil fuel prices have the potential to lock in energy-intensive production: plants that open when electricity and fossil fuel prices are low have been found to consume more energy throughout their lifetime, regardless of current prices (Hawkins-Pierot and Wagner, 2022).
Second, alternatives to fossil fuels have never been cheaper. It is most obvious in the case of electricity production, where technological progress and economies of scale have led to a sharp decrease in the cost of renewable compared to fossil fuel technologies. As shown in Figure 4, between 2010 and 2020 the cost of producing electricity from solar PV has decreased by 85 percent and that of producing electricity from wind by 68 percent. From being the most expensive technologies in 2010, solar PV and wind are now the cheapest. Given the intermittency of these technologies, managing the transition to renewables requires developing electricity storage technologies. Here too, prices are expected to decrease: total installed costs for battery electricity storage systems could decrease by 50 to 60 percent by 2030 according to the International Renewable Agency.
Finding alternatives to fossil fuels has historically been more challenging in the transport sector. However, recent reductions in battery costs, and an increase in the variety of electric vehicles available to customers, have led to EVs taking market share away from gasoline and diesel-powered cars in Europe and elsewhere. The costs of the battery packs that go into electric vehicles have fallen, on average, by 89 percent in real terms from 2010 to 2021.
Figure 4. Evolution of the Mean Levelised Cost of Energy by Technology in the US
Source: Lazard
Options for Policy-Makers
Faced with a strong increase in fossil fuel prices and an incentive to reduce our reliance on oil and gas from Russia, policy-makers have two options: increase the availability and decrease the price of low-carbon substitutes – by, for example, building more renewable energy capacity and subsidizing electric vehicles – or cut taxes on fossil fuels and increase their supply, both domestically and from other countries.
Governments have pursued both options so far. On the one hand, the Netherlands, the UK, and Italy announced an expansion of wind capacities compared to what was planned, in an attempt to reduce their dependence on Russian gas, and France ended gas heaters subsidies. On the other hand, half of EU member states have cut fuel taxes for a total cost of €9 billion by the end of March 2022, the UK plans to expand oil and gas drilling in the North Sea, and Italy might re-open coal-fired plants.
To guide policymakers faced with the current energy crisis, there are valuable lessons to draw from the experiences of energy policy reform in France, the UK and Germany. France’s push for nuclear energy in the 1970s shows that large-scale structural reform of electricity and heat production is possible and may lead to large drops in CO2 emissions and an economy less dependent on domestic or foreign supplies of fossil fuels. A similar “Messmer plan” could be implemented in the EU today, with the goal of replacing power plants using coal and natural gas with large-scale solar PV parks, wind farms and batteries for storage. Similarly, the German experience shows the potential danger of implementing a policy to alleviate one concern – the risk of nuclear accidents – with the consequence of facing a different concern later on – the dependence on fossil fuel imports.
One additional challenge is that the current energy crisis calls for a short-term response, while investments in low-carbon technologies made today will only deliver in a few years. Short-term energy demand reduction policies can help, on top of long-term energy efficiency measures. For example, a 1°C decrease in the temperature of buildings heated with gas would decrease gas use by 10 billion cubic meters a year in Europe, that is, 7 percent of imports from Russia. Similarly, demand-side policies could reduce oil demand by 6 percent in four months, according to the International Energy Agency.
Ending the reliance on Russian fossil fuels and alleviating energy costs for firms and households is clearly an important objective for policymakers. However, by signing new long-term supply agreements for natural gas and cutting energy taxes, policymakers in the EU may create a carbon lock-in and increase fossil fuel usage by households, thereby making the inevitable low-carbon transition even more difficult. The solutions thus need to take the looming climate crisis into account. For example, any tax relief or increased domestic fossil fuel generation should have a clear time limit; more generally, all policies decided today should be evaluated in terms of their contribution to domestic and European climate objectives. In this way, the current energy crisis is not only a challenge but also a historic opportunity to accelerate the low-carbon transition.
References
- Andersson, Julius J. 2019. “Carbon Taxes and CO2 Emissions: Sweden as a Case Study.” American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 11(4): 1-30.
- Aragón, F. M., Rud, J. P., & Toews, G. 2018. “Resource shocks, employment, and gender: Evidence from the collapse of the UK coal industry.” Labour Economics, 52, 54–67. doi: 10.1016/j.labeco.2018.03.007
- Colmer, Jonathan, et al. 2020. “Does pricing carbon mitigate climate change? Firm-level evidence from the European Union emissions trading scheme.” Centre for Economic Performance Discussion Paper, No. 1728, November 2020.
- Dhakal, S., J.C. Minx, F.L. Toth, A. Abdel-Aziz, M.J. Figueroa Meza, K. Hubacek, I.G.C. Jonckheere, Yong-Gun Kim, G.F. Nemet, S. Pachauri, X.C. Tan, T. Wiedmann, 2022: Emissions Trends and Drivers. In IPCC, 2022: Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al Khourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926.004
- IPCC. 2022. Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. Skea, R. Slade, A. Al hourdajie, R. van Diemen, D. McCollum, M. Pathak, S. Some, P. Vyas, R. Fradera, M. Belkacemi, A. Hasija, G. Lisboa, S. Luz, J. Malley, (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA. doi: 10.1017/9781009157926
- Hawkins-Pierot, J & Wagner, K. 2022, “Technology Lock-In and Optimal Carbon Pricing,” Working Paper
- Hecht, Gabrielle. 2009. The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity after World War II. MIT press.
- Jarvis, S., Deschenes, O., & Jha, A. 2022. “The Private and External Costs of Germany’s Nuclear Phase-Out.” Journal of the European Economic Association, jvac007. doi: 10.1093/jeea/jvac007
- Leroutier, M. 2022. “Carbon pricing and power sector decarbonization: Evidence from the UK.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, 111, 102580. doi: 10.1016/j.jeem.2021.102580
- Le Coq, C & Paltseva,E. 2022. “What does the Gas Crisis Reveal About European Energy Security?” FREE Policy Brief
- Rentier, G., Lelieveldt, H., & Kramer, G. J. 2019. “Varieties of coal-fired power phase-out across Europe.” Energy Policy, 132, 620–632. doi: 10.1016/j.enpol.2019.05.042
- Severen, C., & van Benthem, A. A. (2022). “Formative Experiences and the Price of Gasoline.” American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 14(2), 256–84. doi: 10.1257/app.20200407 :
- Wilson, I.A.G., Staffell, I., 2018. “Rapid fuel switching from coal to natural gas through effective carbon pricing.” Nature Energy 3 (5), 365–372.
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Green Concerns and Salience of Environmental Issues in Eastern Europe
Changes in individual behavior are an essential component of the planet’s effort to reduce carbon emissions. But such changes would not be possible without individuals acknowledging the threat of anthropogenic climate change. This brief discusses the climate change risk perceptions across Europe. We show that people in Eastern Europe are, on average, less concerned about climate change than those in Western Europe. Using detailed survey data, we find evidence that the personal experience of extreme weather events is a key driver of green concern, and even more so in the non-EU Eastern part of Europe. We argue that this association might be explained by the relatively low quality and informativeness of public messages concerning global warming in this part of Europe. If information is scarce or perceived as biased, personal experience will resonate more.
Introduction
Climate change is one of the main threats to humanity. Tackling it entails a combined effort from all parts of society, from regulatory changes and industries adopting new greener business models to consumers adjusting their behavior. While an individual’s contribution to climate change may appear insignificant, research shows that the aggregate effect of mobilizing already known changes in consumer behavior may allow the European Union (EU) to reduce its carbon footprint by about 25% (Moran et al., 2020).
However, the first step for people to adjust their consumption patterns is to acknowledge the threat of anthropogenic climate change. Public ignorance about climate change’s impacts remains high across the world. Furthermore, citizens of more polluting countries are often relatively less concerned about climate change. This lack of awareness is not well-understood, in part due to the multi-dimensional local factors affecting it (Farrell et al., 2019).
This brief discusses the potential drivers of climate risk perceptions, focusing on the differences between Western Europe, Eastern European states that are part of the EU, and non-EU Eastern European countries. We first present the climate change concerns across these regions. We then discuss to which extent the country’s pollution exposure measures and individuals’ socio-economic characteristics can explain these differences. We show that the personal experience of extreme weather events is a key driver of green concern, and even more so in the non-EU part of Eastern Europe. We relate this result to the relatively low salience and informativeness of public messages concerning climate in this part of Europe and discuss potential policy implications.
Green Concerns and Pollution Exposure Across Europe
Figure 1 compares, across Europe, the share of poll respondents who see climate change as a major threat, based on the data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2020. While there is a significant variation in climate risk perception within each region, respondents in Eastern Europe are, on average, less concerned about climate change than those in Western Europe. We observe a similar pattern between the EU and non-EU parts of Eastern Europe.
Exposure to pollution does not seem to clearly explain these differences. Moreover, the patterns of correlation between climate concern and pollution differ across regions and measures of pollution exposure. The left panel of Figure 2 presents averages across the regions for two pollution measures: carbon emissions (which is, perhaps, reflecting climate threat in general) and air quality (which is more directly associated with health risks). We can see that CO2 emissions are the highest in the non-EU part of Eastern Europe, the least environmentally concerned region. Still, the EU part of Eastern Europe has the lowest average emissions per capita across the three regions (this ranking likely results from the interaction between reliance on fossil fuels, industrial structure, and level of development across the three regions). At the same time, when it comes to the average air quality (measured as the percentage of population exposed to at least 10 micrograms of PM2.5/m3), the non-EU EasternEuropean region is doing better than its EU counterpart, which is more climate concerned. Here, better average air quality in the non-EU Eastern European region is due to its relatively low population density, and consequently, low PM2.5 exposure in large parts of Russia. (See, more on the air quality gap within the EU in Lehne, 2021).
Figure 1: Climate concerns in Eastern and Western Europe
Source: Authors’ calculations based on Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2020, question 5 “Do you think that climate change is a very serious threat, a somewhat serious threat, or not a threat at all to the people in this country in the next 20 years?”. Averages are calculated with population-representative weights.
The right panel of Figure 2 shows correlations between (country-level) climate concerns and pollution. For CO2, the correlation is negative in all three regions, suggesting that, within each region, more emitting countries are less concerned. This negative correlation, however, is the strongest in the EU-part of Eastern Europe and almost absent in the non-EU part. The differences between the regions are even more striking for the correlation between climate concerns and air quality: both in Western Europe and in the EU part of Eastern Europe, citizens of countries with worse air quality are more concerned about climate change. However, in non-EU Eastern Europe, the relation is the exact opposite: lower concerns about climate change go hand-in-hand with worse quality of air.
Figure 2: Emissions vs. Climate concerns in Eastern and Western Europe, 2018
Source: Authors’ calculations based on www.climatewatchdata.org, OECD and World Risk Poll 2020. The climate concern variable is a country-level weighted average of answers “Very high risk” to the World Risk Poll 2020 question 5, see note to Figure 1.
Green Concerns and Socio-economic Characteristics
Lower climate concerns in EU-part of the Eastern bloc have been documented before; they are often explained by the Eastern-European economies’ high reliance on coal and other fossil fuels, low-income levels, and other immediate problems that lower the priority of climate issues (e.g., Lorenzoni and Pidgeon 2006, Poortinga et al., 2018, or Marquart-Pyatt et al., 2019). Additionally, the literature suggests that climate beliefs are linked to individuals’ socio-economic characteristics, such as level of education, income, or gender (see, e.g., Poortinga, 2019), which may be different across the regions.
However, the regional differences in climate beliefs also persist when we use individual-level data and control for respondents’ individual characteristics, as well as for country-level variables, such as GDP per capita, oil, gas, and coal dependence of the economies, and exposure to emissions (at the country level, as our individual data does not have this information). This is illustrated in Column 1 of Table 1.
Table 1: Climate change beliefs determinants, individual-level cross-section data.
Source: This is an outcome of logistic regression. Experience =1 if the respondent answered “yes” to the World Risk Poll 2020 question L8D “Have you or someone you personally know, experienced serious harm from severe weather events, such as floods or violent storms in the past TWO years?” Media Freedom is based on 2018 Freedom House data, and scores media between 0 (worst) and 4 (best). Controls include age, gender, education, personal feelings about household income, income quantile, urban/rural, size of household, number of children under 15, las well as log of GDP per capita, log of CO2 per capita, mean exposure to PM2.5, and oil, gas and coal rents as a share of GDP. Robust standard errors in parentheses. *** p<0.01, ** p<0.05, * p<0.1
In what follows, we explore another key driver, the personal experience of extreme weather events. While there is a sizable literature on the effect of experience on climate beliefs, that factor was never, to our knowledge, considered to understand the difference in climate risk perception between the EU- and non-EU parts of Eastern Europe.
Green Concern and Salience of Environmental Issues
In line with the recent climate risk perceptions literature (e.g., Van der Linden, 2015), we show that personal experience increases the likelihood of considering climate change as a major threat across all three regions (see column 2 in Table 1). The association is stronger in the EU part of Eastern Europe and even more so in the non-EU part (even if the difference between the last two is not statistically significant). This finding is confirmed when we control for (observable and unobservable) country-specific effects, such as social norms, via the inclusion of country-level fixed effects. In this case, extreme weather events make respondents more climate-conscious within each country (Column 3 of Table 1). In this specification, the effect differs statistically between the two groups of Eastern-European countries, even if only at a 10% significance level. To put it differently, the impact of personal experience with extreme weather events seems to close a sizable part of the gap in climate risk perceptions across the regions and more so in the non-EU part of Eastern Europe.
Our preferred explanation for this finding is that personal experience resonates with the quality and informativeness of public messages concerning global warming. If information is scarce or perceived as biased, personal experience will resonate more. The low political salience of environmental issues in Eastern Europe, inherited from its Soviet past (McCright, 2015), and lower media quality in Eastern Europe (see e.g., Zuang, 2021) are likely to affect the quality of public discourse concerning the risks of climate change, and, consequently, the information available to individuals.
The climate-related legislative effort across Eastern Europe reflects the low political importance of climate change in the region. According to the data from Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, non-EU transition countries, on average, have adopted 8 climate-related laws and policies, while the corresponding figure is 11.5 for EU transition countries and 18 for the countries in Western Europe. Further, Figure 3 shows a positive correlation between climate change concerns and the number of climate-related laws for Western Europe and the EU-part of Eastern Europe but a negative one for the non-EU part of Eastern Europe and Caucasus countries. One possible interpretation of these differences is that climate change is relatively low on the political agenda of (populist) regimes in the non-EU part of Eastern Europe, as climate-related legislative activity (proxied by, admittedly rough, a measure of the number of laws) does not reflect the intensity of population climate preferences.
Figure 3: Climate concern vs. Climate legislation
Source: Authors’ calculations based on climate legislation data from Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, and World Risk Poll 2020
Regarding the influence of media quality, column (4) of Table 1 shows that the effect of personal experience on climate change concern is negatively correlated with media freedom. One interpretation could be that individuals in countries with freer media infer less from their extreme weather experience because more accurate media coverage about climate risks improves the population’s knowledge on the issue.
Of course, the causality of the climate belief-experience relationship could also go in the other direction – people who are more concerned about climate change could be more likely to interpret their personal experience as weather-related extreme events. It is impossible to distinguish with the data at hand. However, Myers et al. (2013) show that both channels are present in the US, and the former channel dominates for the people less engaged in the climate issue. Stretching this finding to the Eastern Europe case, we argue that more precise information on the importance of climate change may partially have the same effect as experience – i.e., it will increase people’s awareness and concern about the consequences of global warming.
Conclusion
This brief addresses the differences in climate change beliefs between Eastern and Western Europe, as well as within Eastern Europe. It discusses the determinants of these differences and stresses the importance of personal experience, especially in the non-EU part of Eastern Europe. It relates this finding to the relatively low accuracy of information and quality of public discourse about climate change in the region.
We know already that tackling climate change requires reliable and accurate sources of information. This is especially crucial given what we outline in this brief. This issue resonates with the current social science analysis of the diffusion of climate change denial (see e.g., Farell et al., 2019, on the significant organized effort in spreading misinformation about climate change). Such contrarian information that relays uncertainty and doubt regarding the severity of the global climate change threat could have a severe impact, especially in situations with low political salience of climate change, like in non-EU Eastern Europe. A significant effort of both governments and civil society is needed to provide adequate information and mobilize the population in our common fight against climate change.
References
- Farrell, J., McConnell, K., and Brulle, R. (2019). Evidence-based strategies to combat scientific misinformation. Nature Climate Change, 9(3), 191-195.
- Lehne, J. (2021), Pollution and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Air Quality in Eastern Europe, FREE Policy brief.
- Lorenzoni, I., Pidgeon, N.F., (2006). Public Views on Climate Change: European and USA Perspectives. Climatic Change 77.
- (2019) Climate Change Views, Energy Policy Preferences, and Intended Actions Across Welfare State Regimes: Evidence from the European Social Survey, International Journal of Sociology, 49:1, 1-26,
- McCright, A., Dunlap, R and Marquart-Pyatt, S. (2015). Political ideology and views about climate change in the European Union. Environmental Politics. 25. 1-21..
- (2020) Quantifying the potential for consumer-oriented policy to reduce European and foreign carbon emissions, Climate Policy, 20:sup1, S28-S38
- Myers, T., Maibach, E., Roser-Renouf, C., Akerlof, K. and Leiserowitz, A. (2013). The Relationship Between Personal Experience and Belief in the Reality of Global Warming. Nature Climate Change. 3. 343-347.
- Poortinga, W., S. Fisher, G. Böhm, L. Steg, L. Whitmarsh and C. Ogunbode, (2018) European Attitudes to Climate Change and Energy: Topline Results from Round 8 of the European Social Survey.
- Poortinga, W., L. Whitmarsh, L. Steg, G. Böhm, S. Fisher, (2019) Climate change perceptions and their individual-level determinants: A cross-European analysis, Global Environmental Change, Volume 55, 2019, Pages 25-35,
- Van der Linden, S. (2015). The social-psychological determinants of climate change risk perceptions: Towards a comprehensive model. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 41, 112-124.
- Zhuang M. (2021), Media Freedom in Eastern Europe, FREE Policy brief https://freepolicybriefs.org/2021/02/22/media-freedom-eastern-europe/
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.
Pollution and the COVID-19 Pandemic: Air Quality in Eastern Europe
The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn attention to a pre-existing threat to global health: the quality of air in cities around the world. Prolonged exposure to air pollution has been found to increase the mortality rate of COVID-19. This is a particular concern for much of Eastern Europe, where emissions regularly exceed safe levels. This policy brief analyses recent data on air quality in the region and the factors that explain a persistent East-West divide in pollution in Europe. It concludes by evaluating to what extent lockdowns in 2020 provided a temporary respite from pollution in the region.
Introduction
The WHO estimates that air pollution causes seven million premature deaths every year (WHO 2018). COVID-19 has further amplified these health risks, as air pollution can increase both the chance of catching respiratory diseases and their severity. At the same time, the pandemic has resulted in lockdowns and a general slowdown in economic activity which are widely perceived as having led to a temporary improvement in air quality.
This brief provides an overview of recent trends in air quality in Eastern European cities using data from the World Air Quality Index. It addresses three questions:
- How did air pollution in Eastern Europe compare to Western Europe prior to the pandemic?
- What are the main sources of air pollution in Eastern European cities and can they be addressed by policymakers?
- Was there a significant improvement in air quality in 2020 as a result of COVID-19?
Air Pollution in Eastern Europe
Most measures of air quality in Europe show a stark East-West divide. Map 1 plots the share of days in 2019 where air pollution, as measured by PM 2.5 (fine particulate matter), exceeded levels classified as unhealthy for the general population. On average, cities to the east of the former Iron Curtain experienced over 100 such days, compared to an average of 20 days in Western Europe. These averages mask significant variation within both regions; Tallinn was among the best performing cities while Naples was among the worst.
Map 1
Source: Author’s calculations based on data from the World Air Quality Index COVID-19 dataset. Above the threshold AQI of 150, PM 2.5 levels are classified as unhealthy to the general population by the US EPA.
The gap in air quality between Eastern and Western Europe has been linked to differences in health outcomes for decades. Shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union, Bobak and Feachem (1995) found that air pollution accounted for a significant share of the Czech Republic and Poland’s mortality gap with respect to Western Europe. The European Environment Agency’s 2020 report provides estimates for ‘years of life lost’ attributable to different pollutants. Figure 1, which plots these estimates for PM 2.5, highlights the fact that Eastern European countries, in particular those in the Balkans, continue to experience significantly higher mortality related to pollution, as compared to their Western European counterparts.
Figure 1
Source: estimates from EEA Air Quality in Europe report 2020
Sources of Air Pollution
A number of factors contribute to the pattern of pollution shown on Map 1, not all of which are under policymakers’ direct control. For example, two of the cities on the map with the unhealthiest air – Sarajevo and Skopje – are surrounded by mountains that prevent emissions from dissipating.
In addition to immutable geographic factors, policies elsewhere may also be contributing to pollution in the region. Stricter regulations in Western Europe can have adverse effects if they result in polluting industries migrating eastwards. Bagayev and Lochard (2017) show that as EU countries adopt new air pollution regulations, the share of their imports from Eastern Europe and Central Asia in pollution-intensive sectors increases. Stricter rules can also result in outdated technology being exported to other countries. A Transport & Environment report found that over 30,000 high-emission diesel cars were exported from Western Europe to Bulgaria in 2017 and argued that such flows will continue as Western European cities impose Low Emission Zones and diesel bans (Transport & Environment 2018).
Power generation, and in particular coal power, is likely to be the single most important determinant of the gap in air quality between Eastern and Western European cities. Coal power accounts for over 60% of electricity production in Poland, Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, and North Macedonia, and remains an important energy source in the majority of Eastern European countries (BP 2020). Many of the coal power plants in the region have been operating for decades and are not equipped with modern desulphurisation technology that would help to reduce their emissions. A report by the Health and Environment Alliance found that 16 coal power plants in the Western Balkans collectively produce more emissions than the 250 power plants in the European Union, while only being able to generate 6% of the power (Matkovic Puljic et al. 2019).
Countries in the region are taking steps to reduce their dependence on coal power. In September 2020, the Polish government struck an agreement with labour unions that would see coal phased out by 2049. Coal accounts for 75% of Poland’s current electricity and Map 1 shows that air in the Upper Silesian Coal Basin, in the south of the country, is particularly polluted. Despite such commitments, Western European countries have in recent years been faster at transitioning away from coal. If this trend continues, the gap in air quality may even increase in the short run.
Did COVID-19 Improve Air Quality?
Last spring, a number of headlines from around the world featured the phrase “A breath of fresh air” (e.g. Reuters, The Economic Times, EUIdeas). These articles described measurable improvements in air quality in cities with government-mandated lockdowns. Recent academic publications have confirmed these reports in a variety of settings including the US (Berman and Ebisu 2020), China (Chen et al. 2020), and Korea (Ju et al. 2020).
While Eastern Europe was less affected by the initial wave of COVID-19 than Western Europe, most countries imposed lockdowns and social distancing measures that can be expected to have affected air quality. Figure 2 uses daily data from the World Air Quality Index for 221 European cities to compare average air pollution in 2020 to 2019. Overall, these plots suggest that air quality did improve in Eastern European cities relative to the previous year. However, not all types of pollutants declined and the declines are slightly smaller on average than in Western European cities. Panels A, B, and C plot air quality indices for fine particulate matter (PM 2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and sulfur dioxide (SO2) respectively. Dots below the line represent cities where the average air quality index was lower (indicating less pollution) in 2020 than in 2019. The declines are largest for NO2 – a gas that is formed when fuel is burned. The reduction in traffic and transportation in all European cities is likely to have contributed to this drop. By contrast, there were no statistically significant declines in SO2. This may be due to the fact that power generation, which is the source of most SO2 emissions, was less affected by lockdowns than transportation.
Figure 2
Panel A
Panel B
Panel C
Source: Author’s calculations based on the World Air Quality Index COVID-19 dataset. Each marker represents a city. Markers below the 45-degree line represent cities where emissions for the respective category of pollutant were lower in 2020 than in 2019. For reasons of presentation, outliers were excluded from panels B and C.
The variation in COVID-19 prevalence over the course of 2020 is visible when tracking pollution over time. Figure 3 shows that average daily NO2 emissions in Western European cities dropped most from March to June of 2020, during the first wave of the pandemic. NO2 levels were comparable to the previous year in July and August when case numbers fell and restrictions were lifted. In the last months of the year, as the second wave hit, NO2 emissions once more dropped below the previous year’s average. This pattern is similar for Eastern European cities but the decline in NO2 in the first half of the year is less pronounced.
Figure 3
Source: Author’s calculations based on the World Air Quality Index COVID-19 dataset. Lines show the seven day moving average of the ratio between average NO2 emissions in 2020 and 2019.
Conclusion
The COVID-19 epidemic has highlighted the health costs of air pollution. The preliminary evidence suggests that long-term exposure to pollution increased COVID-19 mortality rates (Cole et al. 2020, Wu et al. 2020). This is a particular concern for countries across Eastern Europe which – at the time of writing – are still grappling with the second wave of the pandemic in Europe. Many people in this region have been exposed to polluted air for decades.
The pandemic has also demonstrated that air quality can improve relatively quickly when human behaviour changes. The data described in this brief suggest that Eastern Europe was no exception in this regard, although the declines were confined to some categories of pollutants. Achieving a more general, and sustained improvement in air quality will require a shift from coal power towards cleaner forms of energy.
Stimulus packages aimed at a post-pandemic economic recovery can provide an opportunity for policy to reorient the economy and accelerate such a shift. The consultancy Vivid Economics, which rated G20 member countries’ proposed stimulus packages in terms of their environmental impact, found that the ‘greenest’ stimulus proposals are those of the European Commission, France, UK, and Germany. Russia is one of the worst performers on this index (Vivid Economics 2020). Whether governments in Eastern Europe are able to take advantage of this opportunity will depend on their respective fiscal space and whether they make improving air quality a priority.
References
- Bagayev, Igor, and Julie Lochard, 2017. “EU air pollution regulation: A breath of fresh air for Eastern European polluting industries?.” Journal of Environmental Economics and Management 83: 145-163.
- Berman, Jesse D., and Keita Ebisu. 2020 “Changes in US air pollution during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Science of the Total Environment 739: 139864.
- BP 2020 “Statistical Review of World Energy – all data, 1965-2019“
- Bobak, Martin, and Richard GA Feachem. 1995. “Air pollution and mortality in central and eastern Europe: an estimate of the impact.” The European Journal of Public Health , no. 2: 82-86.
- Cole, Matthew, Ceren Ozgen, and Eric Strobl, 2020. “Air pollution exposure and COVID-19.”.
- Chen, Kai, Meng Wang, Conghong Huang, Patrick L. Kinney, and Paul T. Anastas, 2020. “Air pollution reduction and mortality benefit during the COVID-19 outbreak in China.” The Lancet Planetary Health 4, no. 6: e210-e212.
- European Environment Agency 2020. “Air Quality in Europe – 2020 report“, EEA Report No 9/2020
- Matkovic Puljic, V., D. Jones, C. Moore, L. Myllyvirta, R. Gierens, I. Kalaba, I. Ciuta, P. Gallop, and S. Risteska. 2019. “Chronic coal pollution–EU action on the Western Balkans will improve health and economies across Europe.” HEAL, CAN Europe, Sandbag, CEE Bankwatch Network and Europe Beyond Coal, Brussels.
- Ju, Min Jae, Jaehyun Oh, and Yoon-Hyeong Choi. 2020. “Changes in air pollution levels after COVID-19 outbreak in Korea.” Science of The Total Environment 750: 141521.
- Transport & Environment, 2018. “Briefing: Dirty diesels heading east”
- Vivid Economics, 2020. “Greenness of Stimulus Index” December 2020 update
- World Air Quality Index, 2021. “Worldwide COVID-19 dataset“
- World Health Organization, 2018. “WHO Global Ambient Air Quality Database (update May 2018)”
- Wu, Xiao, Rachel C. Nethery, Benjamin M. Sabath, Danielle Braun, and Francesca Dominici, 2020. “Exposure to air pollution and COVID-19 mortality in the United States.” medRxiv
Disclaimer: Opinions expressed in policy briefs and other publications are those of the authors; they do not necessarily reflect those of the FREE Network and its research institutes.