Private‐sector responses to climate change in the Global South

Abstract

What is the private sector response to climate change in the Global South? And what has motivated action? The Carbon Disclosure Project and Clean Development Mechanism registries offer some systematic data in response to the first question. Despite limitations to both data sources, they show that private sector action on climate change clusters in China, India, Brazil and other large industrializing countries. Four drivers–physical, regulatory, market, and reputational–offer answers to the second question. In the more developed countries of the Global South, corporate action is driven primarily by the prospect of domestic climate regulation—some large developing countries have pledged greenhouse gas emissions reductions by 2020—and by the market opportunities created by the Clean Development Mechanism. In the less developed countries, barriers related to weak regulatory environments, low levels of industrialization and growth, restricted access to capital, and limited technical capacity intersect to limit private‐sector action on climate change. Looking to the future, the lack of depth and breadth in the push for corporate action on climate change in the Global South suggests reasons for concern. WIREs Clim Change 2013, 4:479–496. doi: 10.1002/wcc.240 This article is categorized under: Policy and Governance > Private Governance of Climate Change

The business of rapid transition

“…The transition literature has paid more attention to the question of speed and urgency in general, within which business has a key, yet insufficiently analyzed role (Hörisch, 2015; Proka, Beers, & Loorbach, 2018). There is also a need to redress the Northern bias in business and transitions scholarship given the key role of private and state‐owned enterprises in power houses like India, China, Brazil, and South Africa (Pulver & Benney, 2013). Again, scholarship on transitions in those settings provides a useful point of departure for understanding the role of business (Baker, Newell, & Phillips, 2014; Schmitz, 2017).…”

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Are we expecting too much from the private sector in flood adaptation? Scenario-based field experiments with small- and medium-sized firms in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

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