Seminar: Low-Carbon Development

The seminar complements the lecture 'Climate Change Economics'.

In the WS10/11 the seminar's topic is 'Low-Carbon Development'.

Detailed information can be found in the VVZ WS10/11.

Information on the last seminar from WS90/10 is here.

Seminar material can be found here (Password required).

Goal of the seminar: Historically, economic development has gone hand in hand with the combustion of fossil fuels, and thus carbon emissions. A major part of these emissions have been caused by industrialized countries. However, in recent years, developing countries like China and India have shown dramatic increases in their carbon emissions. If more developing countries that currently have low per capita emissions (e.g. in Africa) manage to accelerate economic growth and reduce poverty as newly industrializing countries in Asia and Latin America have, global emissions growth will speed up even further. Reaching ambitious climate targets, such as limiting global warming to 2°C compared to pre-industrialized levels, would then become nearly impossible. Therefore, decoupling economic growth from emissions growth is of foremost importance for solving the climate change problem. At the same time, developing countries must be given the possibility to develop and escape from poverty. The fact that industrialized countries are majorly responsible for climate change, while on the other hand developing countries will have to bear the major consequences of climate change raises major equity concerns. The main question that shall be discussed in this seminar is therefore how sustainable development can be achieved, understood as the development towards a low carbon economy, alleviating poverty and explicitly regarding equity aspects. The goal of the seminar is to make the students familiar with the concept of “low-carbon development”, introduce them to the state-of- the-art research and enable them to conduct their own research in this area.
Structure: The first half of the seminar will be held in “lecture mode”, and will focus on conveying the basic knowledge in the field. The second half will broaden this knowledge by student presentations and group discussions. Both parts will be part of an exam at the end of the seminar. In addition to that, a seminar paper (Hausarbeit) can be written in order to obtain additional credits. The seminar will be held English.
Course of action: Depending on the number of participant, the seminar will span 12 to 14 sessions, 90 minutes each. The first 7 sessions are conceived as lectures to introduce the following fundamental issues: 1. Introduction to neo-classical growth-theory 2.: Development economics and poverty traps 3.: Growth, development, and equity: definitions and concepts 4.: Growth and natural resources 5.: Economic models of energy system transformations 6. Impacts, adaptation, and mitigation in developing countries 7. Developing and transition economies in global climate policy The following meetings are dedicated to deepen the understanding of selected topics through presentations held by seminar participants (see list of topics below). Each presentation should be 35 minutes, followed by a 10 minute discussion, moderated by the presenter. In the final session a test will be held, comprising the content of the lectures and all presentation. The seminar paper shall elaborate on the topic of the presentation and not exceed 20 pages. Topics for presentations and seminar papers:

• Theories of justice
• Climate change and poverty traps
• Climate Change and migration
• Conceptional approaches to adaption
• The role of North-South technology transfer
• Offsets and CDM (Clean Development Mechanism): past, present, future
• Financial instruments “on the ground“ – the role of micro credits
• Feasibility of policy instruments (e.g. emissions trading or carbon taxes) for developing countries
• Sectoral approaches to include developing countries in a global climate agreement
• Promises and drawbacks of NAMAs and fund-based approches
• Carbon-leakage, border-tax adjustment and consumption-based accounting