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This paper reflects on the achievements but also some of the apparent gaps and other limitations of the action plans for the climate emergency emerging from COPs 27 and 28 in 2022 and 2023. It argues that these plans lack coherence about the policies most appropriate for poorer economies that are both likely victims of global warming but also richly endowed with those mineral and other resources critical for the net zero energy transformation of the next few decades. It is appropriate for such countries to lobby hard for enhanced amounts of climate finance – for adaptation, mitigation and loss and damage. However, the huge amounts of such finance argued to be necessary are unlikely to be achievable for many reasons that the COP papers themselves document. Poorer countries in particular—especially the most debt burdened countries in Africa cannot attract the significant private climate finance nor indeed raise the large budgetary contributions said to be necessary. The central contribution of this paper is its defence of the proposition that there is a strong case for shifting the balance of the arguments to favour a more active approach – by host countries supported by international agencies – to focus on the positive opportunities for investment, and sustainable growth associated with the huge endowments of critical metals, minerals, and natural gas found in lower income economies. To support this proposition, the paper documents the impressive scale of such resources; shows that they are often the single most important source of FDI; shows examples of how their thoughtful use can yield the triple win of reduced energy poverty (SDG 7); improved fiscal balances but also enhanced health outcomes. The paper also argues that in the context of a world where major oil, gas and metal producers are increasingly responding to pressures for more “climate sensitive” supply chains, these large investments in mineral resources can be consistent with a country’s overall agenda for a more energy efficient, low carbon future. Indeed, the extractive companies that are bringing these new investments are also likely to be a major source of new climate-related investments and “greening” technologies. Both the companies and host governments, in their policies for the sector need to factor in this new emerging reality. This paper does not suggest that the design and implementation of a successful extractives-led development strategy is in any way easy, nor that the problems are the same in all poorer countries endowed with minerals The differences in both the economic and political-economy situations of different countries are of course substantial. There are also important differences in the challenges facing counties with mostly hydro-carbon assets as compared to those with mostly metal and mineral assets. However, we know for sure that the contribution to global warming of almost all categories of lower income economies is vanishingly small. Hence the global climate agenda would face few risks and could realize substantial benefits by encouraging those countries richly endowed with mineral assets considerable flexibility in continuing in a responsible manner with the use of the various mined products with which they are richly endowed.

This seminar volume, edited by Richard C. Barth, Alan R. Roe, and Chorng-Huey Wong, presents an overview of the links between structural and macroeconomic policies that were addressed in an IMF Institute seminar held in Washington, D.C., in 1993. The most important areas of structural reform are covered: the price system, tax and expenditure policy, exchange rate management, external trade, public enterprises, the financial sector, and social safety nets. Four case studies are presented: China, Poland, Argentina, and the Gambia.

From the 1950s to the 1980s, affordable tourism for the masses became one of the hallmarks of the “Soviet good life”. However, through the course of these decades, Soviet environmentalists increasingly viewed mass outdoor tourism as a serious threat to nature. They tried to address this problem in two ways. First, they sought to educate tourists on environmental protection and promoted tourist-led environmental protection initiatives. The promotion of national parks was the second means by which environmentalists addressed tourism’s environmental impact. Soviet environmentalists believed that national parks, in addition to tourism more environmentally sustainable, would help reorient regional economies towards tourism and away from environmentally destructive industries as well as bring international prestige to Soviet environmental protection efforts. From the 1960s through the 1980s, scientific and architectural institutes, civic organizations, professors, and private citizens envisioned, designed, and promoted national parks throughout the USSR. By the late 1980s, national parks had become rallying points for a widely expanded and more protest-oriented environmental community. Increasing environmental concern throughout the USSR dramatically increased the expectations of park founders and supporters. In many cases, they argued that national parks could serve as vehicles for sweeping regional economic and cultural transformation. The Soviet Union’s rapid decline and the economic chaos that followed its collapse made such transformative visions for national parks untenable. Few Russians wanted to travel domestically during the 1990s, and the state was unable to provide national parks with the finances to perform their most basic functions. By the late 1990s, Russian national parks served as a painful reminder of the failure of the USSR and then the Russian Federation to protect its scenic treasures as well as the dependence of Russian environmentalists on the international environmental community.

This chapter contains sections titled: Transportation Canals Pollution Dams Conclusion References

'Coarse geometry' is the study of metric spaces from the asymptotic point of view: two metric spaces (such as the integers and the real numbers) which 'look the same from a great distance' are considered to be equivalent. This book develops a cohomology theory appropriate to coarse geometry. The theory is then used to construct 'higher indices' for elliptic operators on noncompact complete Riemannian manifolds. Such an elliptic operator has an index in the $K$-theory of a certain operator algebra naturally associated to the coarse structure, and this $K$-theory then pairs with the coarse cohomology. The higher indices can be calculated in topological terms thanks to the work of Connes and Moscovici. They can also be interpreted in terms of the $K$-homology of an ideal boundary naturally associated to the coarse structure. Applications to geometry are given, and the book concludes with a discussion of the coarse analog of the Novikov conjecture.