Social impacts of climate change mitigation policies and their implications for inequality

Abstract

The Paris Agreement and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set ambitious targets for environmental, economic and social progress. Climate change mitigation policies play a central role in this process. To maximize the benefits and minimize the negative effects of climate change mitigation policies, policymakers need to be aware of the indirect and often complex social and inequality impacts that these policies may have and the pathways through which these impacts emerge. Better understanding of the distributional and inequality impacts is important to avoid negative social and distributional outcomes as countries ratchet up their climate policy ambition in the post-Paris context. This paper synthesizes evidence from the existing literature on social co-impacts of climate change mitigation policy and their implications for inequality. The analysis shows that most policies are linked to both co-benefits and adverse side-effects, and can compound or lessen inequalities depending on contextual factors, policy design and policy implementation. The risk of negative outcomes is greater in contexts characterized by high levels of poverty, corruption and economic and social inequalities, and where limited action is taken to identify and mitigate potentially adverse side-effects.

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