Climate Policy Consulting

Recommended reading! From London. While urban planners strive to create inclusive environments for all citizens, truly inclusive cities require acknowledging that our spaces do not serve everyone equally. Cities historically designed primarily by and for men need deliberate recalibration to address the needs of women and other overlooked groups. This requires policymakers and designers to specifically examine how urban environments function for diverse populations with different lived experiences. The 2024 Handbook: Gender-Informed Urban Design & Planning LLDC (London Legacy Development Corporation) and Arup have released a usefull handbook addressing a critical gap in urban planning: gender-informed design approaches. The publication features beautiful illustrations by Shanice Abbey. Key findings: • Urban environments, traditionally viewed as gender-neutral, often contain embedded biases that compound gender inequalities • Over half of UK girls aged 13-18 report unwanted sexual comments in public spaces • Women's movement patterns are significantly impacted by caregiving responsibilities • Research identified specific "hotspot" areas perceived as unsafe within the LLDC boundary Practical recommendations for implementation: • For local authorities: Establish gender-informed corporate strategies, implement gender budgeting, adopt targeted planning policies, and utilize planning obligations • For developers: Embed gender-informed principles throughout project lifecycle, conduct participatory engagement, and prepare Gender-Informed Design Statements • Deploy specific design interventions including strategic lighting, carefully placed public realm furniture, and thoughtful land use planning This handbook offers evidence-based insights and practical tools for integrating gender-informed principles into existing planning frameworks, emphasizing intersectionality and meaningful community involvement. The guidance extends beyond theoretical concepts, suggesting concrete design solutions such as layered lighting for human scale, social seating configurations, and interim uses for vacant sites. A valuable resource for all urban professionals committed to creating truly inclusive cities. #UrbanPlanning #GenderEquality #InclusiveDesign #PublicSpace #UrbanSafety #SpatialPlanning #DesignInnovation #CommunityEngagement

How do we estimate climate change macroeconomic risks in The World Bank's Country Climate and Development Reports? We just published a methodological paper that present a methodology used in many of them, with our partners at Industrial Economics (IEc). The methodology captures a set of impact channels through which climate change affects the economy by (1) connecting a set of biophysical models to the macroeconomic model and (2) exploring a set of development and climate scenarios. The paper summarizes the results for five countries, highlighting the sources and magnitudes of their vulnerability - with estimated gross domestic product losses in 2050 exceeding 10 percent of gross domestic product in some countries and scenarios, although only a small set of impact channels is included. The paper also presents estimates of the macroeconomic gains from sector-level adaptation interventions, considering their upfront costs and avoided climate impacts and finding significant net gross domestic product gains from adaptation opportunities identified in the Country Climate and Development Reports. Finally, the paper discusses the limits of current modeling approaches, and their complementarity with empirical approaches based on historical data series. I think there are strong complementarity between empirical approaches (which measure historical aggregated impacts and are key for calibration and validation) and process-based modeling (which can consider possible thresholds in the future and run policy counterfactuals). The paper is here: https://lnkd.in/gpAURDV5. Comments welcome! Kodzovi ABALO, Ph.D, Brent Boehlert, Thanh Bui (Tania), Andrew Burns, Unnada Chewpreecha, Charl Jooste, Florent McIsaac, Kim Smet, Kenneth Strzepek, and Diego Castillo and Heather Ruberl.

If Public Policy is meant to be hands-on, shouldn’t public policy research be that too? Too often, I see policy students buried in secondary data, producing neat reports from government websites or the World Bank database. Useful? Sure. But if that’s all we needed, the economists and sociologists already had it covered. Public policy as a discipline was born to be pragmatic; to reflect ground realities instead of only theorizing them. And yet, much of our research still feels like “watch-and-wait” instead of “test-and-learn.” Here’s the truth: our knowledge gaps about how things work on the ground are still enormous. Policy isn’t failing because we don’t have enough PDFs; it’s failing because too few people are running real-world experiments. What we desperately need is more action-oriented, experimental research. Think of examples like: >Testing whether SMS reminders improve pension enrollment in one taluka before scaling. >Trying two grievance redressal systems in different districts and comparing results. >Piloting cash vs. in-kind transfers to see which impacts nutrition better. This is how public policy builds knowledge that actually works in messy, real contexts. And here’s the encouraging part: you don’t need to be a tenured professor with a million-dollar grant to do this. Even as a student or early-career professional, you can start small: 3 steps to move from “desk-based” to “hands-on” research: ~Start with micro-experiments. Pick a small public program in your city/village. Test something measurable. It could be as simple as comparing how two different posters influence awareness about a scheme. ~Collaborate with NGOs/startups. They are often open to researchers testing small innovations. You get access to the field, they get actionable insights. Win-win. ~Document and share. Publish your findings (even if modest) as short blogs, LinkedIn posts, or working papers. Remember: visibility attracts collaboration, and collaboration creates larger projects. Here’s the mindset shift: don’t wait for the perfect dataset. Create the dataset. So, to every MPP student, researcher, or young professional: step beyond Excel sheets and borrowed numbers. Immerse yourself. Run pilots. Shadow a government department. Collect primary data. Learn by doing. Because policy isn’t guesswork but if we don’t generate evidence rooted in lived reality, guesswork is all we’ll ever have. What’s one experiment you’d love to test if you had the chance? #PublicPolicy #Research #Impact #PolicyEducation #Evidence #LearningByDoing

Really appreciated this analysis of EO by Andrew Wyckoff . Couldn’t agree more. “given the global nature of AI, international coordination will be needed to adequately deliver the needed protections. The good news is that on the same day the White House issued the Executive Order, the Japanese Presidency of the G7 issued a G7 Leaders Statement on the Hiroshima AI Process that includes its own “International Code of Conduct for Organizations Developing Advanced AI Systems” that mirror many elements of the EO. While the White House and the State Department deserve credit for this choreography, so do the Japanese and the G7 as an institution. Few recall that thanks to the Japanese, the G7 has been collectively discussing AI policy since 2016 when Digital Ministers met for the first time and the Japanese tabled a proposal for eight “Guidelines for AI R&D,” including transparency, safety, and accountability. This launched the development of the OECD’s AI Principles that were adopted first by the OECD and then were copied by the G20 in 2019 under a Japanese G20 presidency. In all, 50 countries signed onto these principles that provide an early common international approach to AI governance. The AI dialogue has continued at the G7 with each successive presidency since… Principles are important, but ensuring implementation and compliance is essential and must be the priority. While the G7, which includes the EU, is a good starting point, it is far from global. The U.S. needs to work with its partners to build on this base. A logical next step for the OECD’s 38 member countries and six accession countries would involve a collective review of OECD’s AI Principles in 2024, but this needs to be done in a coordinated fashion with the G20 under a Brazilian presidency and as part of the UN Global Compact, which can accelerate its work by building on these international agreements” Center for AI and Digital Policy Marc Rotenberg

I had a chance to facilitate a workshop for 130 people. Here what makes it a success. 💡 CHOOSE THE RIGHT METHOD With 130 people and it needs to be a workshop not a seminar, we decided to break into 6 group which every group had 1 facilitator. We only have 2.5 hours so we needs to stick on the timing and start end on time in each activity. 💡 ENGAGING SESSION Need to ensure that each participant feels involved although they are part of a big group. It could be done by asking the representative of each group to share their opinion during plenary session or to ensure everyone contributes during small group discussion. 💡 MANAGE THE ENERGY This is a shared responsibility with the co-facilitator. Need to ensure that everyone is engaged in the discussion, have high energy, and eager to participate. When we see the energy down then we could have a quick intermezzo or icebreaking session to bring the energy back. 💡 PERSONALIZATION The small group discussion format is important to ensure that everyone have their voice to be heard which less likely to be done if we only have 1 big group with 130 people as participants. 💡 CHECK THE IMPACT Make them share the insight, key learnings, and also next action plan that they could implement in day to day work to make their work more effective and efficient. The success of a workshop is always combination of having clear objective to come up with the right format, good preparation, well coordinated facilitators, and good execution on the day. As facilitator, it is important to have high energy when we deliver the session since our energy is contagious. If anyone has additional tips for a successful workshop facilitation, feel free to write in the comment section! DM me for any potential collaboration!

It is clear that complex policy problems like #ClimateChange require a combination of instruments. However, as I argue in this new article for Policy Quarterly: "Just because multiple policies are justifiable, this does not mean that any particular policy is justified." Attached are some thoughts, drawing on empirical and theoretical evidence, on how to design a judicious policy mix in #Aotearoa #NewZealand. Come for the jokes about our predicament! Stay for the insights into current #economics and #policy research! If I was to summarise the essay in a few bullet points, here goes: 🗣️ For a nation of supposedly practical people, we are remarkably beholden to academic economic theory that sounds fine in the abstract, but does not hold up in the real world. 🗣️ The context of climate change policy is #TransformativeChange. This is both a source of regret (i.e. loss of existing systems) and opportunity (i.e. transitions into better systems). What matters is that our policy tools – from appraisal to implementation to evaluation – are suited to this task, rather than designed for marginal adjustments in a world that stays – ceteris paribus – roughly the same. 🗣️ A lot of economic "common-sense" that influences our policy making does not survive scrutiny. For instance, it is commonly taken for granted that non-pricing policies are necessarily inefficient because emissions pricing is the most efficient in theory. However, in real-word circumstances, where markets are highly imperfect and policy targets are highly demanding, it is not at all obvious that non-pricing policies are necessarily less efficient. They might be, they might not. 🗣️ Efficiency is only one of many principles that does, and should, govern policy making. Also, economic efficiency can be defined in critically different ways; in particular, there is a crucial difference between static efficiency at a single point in time and dynamic efficiency over time. In #ClimatePolicy, the latter is highly relevant: it will sometimes make sense to invest in expensive options to drive down future costs and therefore increase dynamic efficiency. 🗣️ #Paradigms shape our understanding of economic possibilities. A paradigm of market failure strives to return the economy to equilibrium, which is rather problematic when our current system is optimised for fossil fuels. A paradigm of evolutionary economics puts us in the mindset of transformation, of ecosystems adapting to change and evolving into new arrangements. In this vein, Simon Sharpe redefines the policymaker’s role as follows: "We are not mechanics, fixing the machine when it fails. We are something more like gardeners, tending and shaping the ecosystem so that it grows in ways that we find beneficial". All this and much more in the article attached, part of an exceptional collection of essays on environmental policy in this month's Policy Quarterly, edited by the inimitable Professor Jonathan Boston. Links in comments below. ⏬

📢Exciting News I am pleased to share World Bank Group’s Benchmarking Infrastructure Development website which was just launched, a comprehensive database revealing legal reforms in #PPP governance across regions. Dive into the data & access information on global infrastructure development practices. https://bpp.worldbank.org/ This database provides information on the latest data related to the quality of the legal and regulatory frameworks for preparing, procuring, and managing public-private partnerships (PPPs) and unsolicited proposals (USPs). This latest database update reveals that out of 140 economies assessed, 60 have enacted reforms between June 1, 2019, and June 1, 2022. Those reforms show that economies are improving their scores (range 0–100) as they adopt best practices. While not all regulatory changes impacted the measured benchmarks, the data show score increases in all four thematic areas since the data presented in BID 2020. While not all reforms have had a profound impact on the quality of the legal environment for PPPs, there are notable exceptions.  An important element in establishing a robust PPP framework is the creation of a dedicated PPP unit. The BID website hosts an extraordinary wealth of data that is underpinned by collection efforts in each of the 140 economies covered. Are you curious about regional trends or how different income levels stack up? The revamped BID site's got you covered with aggregate data that is easy to navigate. But that's not all, you can dive deep into the world of good international practices and see how they spread (or not) across the planet. Reader can also get their hands on the full survey for each economy, assess the latest reforms, and spot the practices that are still on the to-do list. Moreover, the user can easily download an economy summary PDF to pinpoint areas ripe for reform. Finally, the full database can be downloaded, and it captures the legal basis for more than 100 questions in the 140 economies. Please note that the forthcoming Benchmarking Infrastructure Development report that is based on this updated database, and which will delve into the reforms in detail and provide valuable insights and analysis on global PPP practices and legal standards, will come out in the next few months.   Those interested in countries of South Asia can access the database and delve deeper.  

Good policies start with good data. How can countries measure the real impact of their intellectual property (IP) systems? That’s the question behind the project “Systematization of Statistical Data and the Design and Implementation of a Methodology for Developing Impact Assessments on the Use of the Intellectual Property System”, first proposed by El Salvador at World Intellectual Property Organization – WIPO’s Committee on Development and Intellectual Property. Last week, we launched the first pilot training workshop in San Salvador. Over three days, policymakers, technical staff, and data users came together to learn how to turn IP and innovation data into actionable insights for smarter policies using enriched databases, analytical indicators, and interactive dashboards. Thank you to our partners at the Salvadoran Institute of Intellectual Property (ISPI) at Centro Nacional de Registros for their strong collaboration, and to Julio D. Raffo and colleagues from WIPO. El Salvador’s leadership as the pilot country will guide similar trainings in Bhutan, Côte d’Ivoire, and Indonesia, and later at an international training. Better use of IP data means better decisions and stronger innovation ecosystems worldwide. Learn more about IP and Innovation data: https://lnkd.in/eNrNpkrj #IntellectualProperty #InnovationEcosystem #DataDriven #Policy #CapacityBuilding #ElSalvador

Sharing an approach I’ll be using to kick off the facilitation of an HSE Leaders Forum tomorrow that I hope others might find valuable. Instead of starting with the usual introductions (name, job role etc), I want to focus on the reason we are there: discussing innovative ways to solve the challenges participants are facing in their workplaces or industries. Each participant will introduce themselves by sharing a challenge framed as a "How Might We?" (HMW) statement. This simple method encourages participants to: 1️⃣ Clarify the Challenge: Turning a health and safety challenge into an opportunity helps focus the conversation on possibility. 2️⃣ Spark Collaboration: Open-ended, opportunity-focused challenges invite diverse perspectives and ideas. 3️⃣ Create Immediate Value: Sharing key challenges helps everyone see where they can contribute and connect meaningfully - on the things that matter. "How might we better communicate critical risk management expectations with subcontractors?" "How might we reduce working at height activities in our business?" "How might we assure critical risk controls in real-time?" I’ve found this approach aligns discussions with what really matters, and leaves participants with actionable insights. If you’re planning a collaborative session, this could be a great way to shift from introductions to impactful conversations right from the start. Feel free to adapt this for your own forums or workshops; I’d love to hear how it works for you and if you have any other facilitation tips. #SafetyTech #SafetyInnovation #Facilitation #Learning

🌍 New Report Alert: Building a Policy Compass – Navigating Future Migration with Anticipatory Methods 🌍 👉 Migration is a dynamic, multifaceted challenge influenced by climate change, political upheavals, economic volatility, among other drivers. 👉Migration policies often play catch-up, reacting after crises unfold. ➡️ How to develop more proactive, evidence-based strategies that anticipate migration trends and challenges before they escalate? 📖 Our latest report, published for the Big Data for Migration Alliance (BD4M), offers policymakers an overview of methods and tools that can enable forward-looking decision-making. See: https://lnkd.in/ex5Tkamn ➡️ Key Elements: ✅NEW TAXONOMY: To simplify the selection of anticipatory methods, the report introduces a new taxonomy: Experience-Based Methods: Grounded in lived experiences. Expertise-Based Methods: Driven by expert knowledge. Exploration-Based Methods: Encourages creative problem-solving for unforeseen challenges. ✅ COMPARISION: We assess in-depth three methods: 🔎 Scenario Planning: Prepares for multiple migration outcomes by analyzing drivers but requires robust data and unbiased interpretation. Best for medium- to long-term policy planning. 🚨 Early Warning Systems (EWS): Uses real-time data to respond to sudden displacements. A powerful tool but challenges include data privacy concerns and the risk of overreaction. 🔗 Cross-Impact Analysis (CIA): Offers insights into how migration drivers interact, helping policymakers understand cascading effects. Highly data-intensive but invaluable for systemic policy design. ✅ CHECKLIST: Every migration context is unique. The report provides eight criteria for selecting the best method, from data availability and policy goals to stakeholder involvement and resource constraints. ✍️ Co-authors: Sara Marcucci and María Esther Cervantes 🙌 Thanks to the BD4M Alliance contributors: Martina Belmonte (JRC), Damien Jusselme (GMDAC ), Anna Maria Rosinska, Ph.D. (JRC), and Alina Menocal Peters (IOM - UN Migration), for their insightful reviews and contributions. 📥 Download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/ex5Tkamn 💻 More on Big Data for Migration: https://lnkd.in/dR6zuis #MigrationPolicy #AnticipatoryMethods #DataForGood #PolicyInnovation #BigDataForMigration