10.3.2.4 Interaction of Climate Policy with other Objectives
The linkages between the social, economic, environmental, and political dimensions
of sustainable development call for policies that can serve multiple objectives,
and requires that a balance be struck when objectives conflict. These linkages
are often mutually reinforcing in the long run, but may sometimes be contradictory
in the short term (OECD, 1999c). In this regard, a critical requirement of sustainable
development is a capacity to design policy measures that, without hindering
development and remaining consistent with national strategies, could exploit
potential synergies between national economic growth objectives and environmentally
focused policies. Climate change mitigation strategies offer a clear example
of how co-ordinated and harmonized policies can take advantage of the synergies
between the implementation of mitigation options and broader objectives.
Over the past years, of the policy options to mitigate climate change, technological
options to limit or reduce GHG emissions have received by far the most attention.
Chapters 3 and 4 provide a comprehensive
review of technologies and practices to mitigate climate change. Energy efficiency
improvements (including energy conservation), switches to low carbon-content
fuels, use of renewable energy sources, and the introduction of more advanced
non-conventional energy technologies are expected to have significant impacts
on curbing actual GHG emission tendencies. Similarly, the adoption of new technologies
and practices in agriculture and forestry activities, as well as the adoption
of clean production processes, could make substantial contributions to the GHG
mitigation effort. Depending on the specific context in which they are applied,
these options may entail ancillary benefits, and in some cases are worth undertaking
whether or not there are climate-related reasons for doing so.
The potential linkages between climate change mitigation issues and economic
and social aspects have also brought an important shift in the focus of mitigation
analysis literature. From being confined to project-by-project or sector-based
approaches, analyses and studies are increasingly concerned with broader policy
issues as mechanisms to reduce the increase of GHG emissions. Fresh methodological
developments (UNEP, 1998) broaden climate change mitigation policies by incorporating
distributional impacts, negative side effects, and the appropriate choice of
instruments and institutional constraints, among others. This provides a somewhat
different slant on the focus of climate change mitigation policies. More emphasis
is now given to exploit mutually reinforcing links among individual actions,
to take advantage of the potential interactions of mitigation options with other
objectives, and to supplement individual mechanisms with economic instruments
of wider scope.
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