New GDP Center Research on Climate Change for COP 25

As global climate leaders gather in Spain for this year’s conference of the parties, the GDP Center offers a variety of new research products to help policy-makers design more evidence-based policies to address the global climate crisis.

In a new report with the Brookings Institution, GDP researchers find that the global community is falling far short of mobilizing the resources needed to meet the Paris Climate commitments. We estimate that the world is falling short by 2.1 percent of global GDP on an annual basis to 2030. In another report with the World Resources Institute, we show that China is becoming a strong new force of overseas financing, but that such flows are not matched with host country NDCs. That said, in a new study that the GDP Center helped the UNDP and the China Development Bank prepare, the China Development Bank has now set out a set of principles for harmonizing its overseas investments for the SDGs and Paris goals.

In the absence of strengthened commitments for climate change, Caroline Flammer and colleagues examine whether shareholder activism can elicit greater disclosure of firms’ exposure to climate change risks in a new working paper for the GDP Center. They find that environmental shareholder activism increases the voluntary disclosure of climate change risks, especially if initiated by investors who are more powerful (institutional investors) or whose request has more legitimacy (long-term institutional investors). They also find that companies that voluntarily disclose climate change risks following environmental shareholder activism achieve a higher valuation, suggesting that investors value transparency with respect to climate change risks.

To learn more about these and other knowledge products, and to view a new video produced with UNCTAD calling for a New Multilateralism for Shared Prosperity, click on the links below: