With significant investment, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) region could attain full energy access and 53 percent renewable energy (RE) capacity by 2040 while on its way towards zero-carbon growth. However, there is increasing concern that SADC countries have become economically vulnerable and increasingly unable to take on more external debt due to the […]
After several years of negotiations to “modernize” the Energy Charter Treaty (ECT), members must decide by June 24, 2022, whether to amend provisions of the treaty, leave it as is or withdraw from it entirely. The ECT is the only international investment treaty with a sectoral focus on energy. It has been ratified by 50 […]
By Samantha Igo Decisive climate action to cut carbon emissions within the next few years will be essential for decreasing the odds of breaching the 1.5C threshold of global warming. However, as governments prepare for complex energy transitions, actions to halt oil and gas production – like cancelling pipelines or drilling permits – could be […]
By Rishikesh Ram Bhandary It’s ‘now or never’ to keep global warming below 1.5°C, but achieving this target requires a substantial coordinated effort to increase the scale and pace of efforts to transition away from fossil fuels. A key part of this transition is putting an end to financing of new fossil fuel projects around […]
With the recent end of public finance for coal power, many multilateral development banks (MDBs) are working to move financing activity away from other fossil fuels, including natural gas. But in the past, as MDBs moved away from certain types of energy projects, China emerged as the largest public financier and, in some cases, the […]
By Samantha Igo The 12th World Trade Organization (WTO) Ministerial Conference (MC12) convenes this week, June 12-15, following multiple postponements of the conference due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Against the backdrop of a lagging global vaccination effort, divergent economic recoveries and worsening climate change, trade ministers and other senior officials from the WTO’s 164 member […]
By Rishikesh Ram Bhandary From June 6-16, climate negotiators will meet in Bonn, Germany for two weeks for the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change intersessional meeting. Negotiators will focus on laying the groundwork to increase climate ambition and hammering out details to further buttress the Paris Agreement on climate change. The meeting, however, […]
By Rachel Thrasher, Veronika Wirtz and Warren Kaplan At the World Trade Organization’s (WTO) 12th Ministerial Conference from June 12-15 in Geneva, Switzerland, trade ministers and other senior officials will gather to discuss the future of the international trading system. Many members view this long-delayed conference as a sign of whether the WTO as an […]
By Amanda Brown The Spring 2022 Global Economic Governance Book Talk Series convened four distinguished scholars with recent books, spanning topics from oil politics and China’s escape from shock therapy, to the political economy of energy transitions and the globalization of patient capital. Stephen B. Kaplan opened the series with a discussion on the political […]
By Luma Ramos The recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report stressed that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from 2010-2019 were higher than in any previous decade, and as such, limiting global warming will require major transitions in the energy sector. However, little is known about how low-carbon energy transitions unfold, particularly in developing countries. On […]