Climate change affects every aspect of society today, and many countries are continuing to respond to both the global and domestic challenges posed by a warming planet. Adapting to the effects of adverse weather conditions, enacting new policies to cut greenhouse gas emissions, and changing infrastructures to ensure smooth implementation of climate actions are only part of the challenge; ensuring a green transition is aligned with a country’s growth and development objectives is also critical for fundamental, transformational change. 

Therefore, many governments link their climate change and sustainable development plans. By doing so, governments can advance their climate and sustainable development goals together.

A primary driver of this approach is that climate-related policies almost always have socio-economic impacts. Climate policies could have both positive and negative effects on jobs, health, food security, household expenditure, and so on. Having data on hand to show the effects of those policies can help policy makers weigh the benefits of actions against potential trade-offs, by mitigating negative impacts and strengthening the positive ones. This in turn, informs policy making processes, and addresses the challenges of being able to demonstrate the impact of climate policies on sustainable development. 

For example, when a country phases out its coal-fired power plants, decision makers would want to know what the reduction in greenhouse gases would be. In addition, what would the environmental benefits — such as improved air quality — be? Would there be any economic benefits, such as reduced healthcare costs? And how many jobs would be lost and how many created? Reliable data is needed – ideally integrated into a country’s climate transparency framework –  that can provide answers to all these questions. This transparency framework is vital for national policies to be well designed and implemented, and to contribute to the building of confidence amongst national and international stakeholders.  

This is where ICAT’s Sustainable Development Methodology comes in. The methodology helps decision-makers assess multiple environmental, social and economic impacts of activities to demonstrate if policies are effective in delivering social development and climate change effects, whether they be positive or negative.

ICAT partnered national experts to implement just this in Sri Lanka, Nigeria, Ghana and Costa Rica. ICAT’s implementing partner in Sri Lanka, Ghana and Costa Rica was UNEP Copenhagen Climate Centre; while the Greenhouse Gas Management Institute was the implementing partner in Nigeria.

Sri Lanka

The ICAT project in Sri Lanka began with the development of a measurement, reporting and verification framework for the country’s transport sector, and then – using the ICAT methodology – developed a framework to assess the social development impacts of the climate-related activities it had implemented in the sector.

This involved developing assessment procedures for transport-related contributions to the health impacts of air pollutants, noise pollution levels, gender equality and women empowerment, traffic congestion, road safety, wages, job creation, cost saving of privately owned vehicles, and new business opportunities. 

In the long term, this will enable Sri Lanka to quantify the sustainable development benefits of its climate programme for the transport sector; in turn, this could enhance stakeholder support and mobilize finance. 

Nigeria

Transport was one of three focus areas of the ICAT project in Nigeria. Specifically, Nigeria assessed the benefits of decarbonising the transport sector by establishing and analysing social development indicators linked to its decarbonization plan. 

Among the steps Nigeria is taking for decarbonization of the sector is to introduce 70,000 additional buses to its public transport infrastructure by 2030, to limit travel by car; and to have at least 25 per cent of trucks and buses using compressed natural gas by 2030. 

Using the Sustainable Development Methodology and ICAT’s Transport Sector Climate Action Co-benefit Evaluation (TRACE) tool, Nigeria calculated that 7.3 billion person hours were spent in traffic congestion in 2020, and car users could account for USD 1.5 billion in economic losses each year, by 2030 (in a business as usual scenario). Introducing 70,000 additional buses by 2030 would result in economic savings of USD 1.8 billion per year by 2030.

Under a business as usual scenario, fuel consumption is estimated to reach 25 billion litres of gasoline  per year by 2030. By introducing more stringent emissions standards in 2020, Nigeria has already cut fuel consumption by 20% for all vehicle types. Under its decarbonization plan, it is expecting fuel savings to rise from close to 4 billion litres of gasoline equivalent (lge) in 2020 to approximately 10 billion lge in 2030. Annual spending on fuel is projected to be USD 3.5 billion lower in 2030, with cumulative savings of USD 27 billion over the decade.  

It is estimated that road transport emissions could lead to 12,000 premature deaths and have an economic cost of around USD 2 billion between 2020 and 2030, in a business as usual scenario. With climate mitigation measures in place, the number of deaths could be reduced by 6,000 and related costs cut by half over the same period.

Ghana

In Ghana, the Sustainable Development Methodology was used to develop a set of assessment criteria, and then to actually measure impacts of Ghana’s solar rooftop programme. 

The solar rooftop programme aims to provide 40,000 households with access to clean and affordable electricity; with most of the households using solar energy to complement their primary electricity use from the national grid. 

Using the ICAT methodology, the project showed the rooftop programme did indeed bring about significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and air pollutants. In addition, it was estimated it would result in generating about 280 installation and maintenance jobs during its implementation period; and the cumulative avoided annual electric bill for the 40,000 households over the 15 years would total US$ 400,000. Finally, the avoided import cost of natural gas was estimated at US$ 295,600 over the 15 years.

Costa Rica

While Nigeria, Ghana and Sri Lanka used the methodology to assess the sustainable development impacts of specific projects, Costa Rica used the methodology to develop criteria to assess the impacts of its entire climate programme.

In the first phase of the ICAT project in Costa Rica, the country expanded its national climate change metrics system, the Sistema Nacional de Métrica de Cambio Climático SINAMECC) to include such assessment. SINAMECC was specifically designed to improve evidence-based decision making on climate action and policy. In particular, it provides support for data collection and management, greenhouse gas inventory calculations and data storage, a mitigation and adaptation action registry, sustainable development impact analysis and related data visualizations.

However, its first version did not include any social development indicators. Therefore, the second phase of the ICAT project involved adding a social development arm to SINAMECC, with the aid of the ICAT sustainable development methodology. 

The ICAT methodology provided a starting point, with activities including a thorough process of methodological development – using pilots – and stakeholder engagement to create guidance tailor-made for Costa Rica.

In parallel, the transformational change impacts were evaluated as a way for assessing additionality of climate actions for the national carbon market.

This work has enabled Costa Rica to implement its Decarbonization Plan while ensuring it considers the impacts of this plan on its sustainable development. The country aims to bring about long-term transformational change, and SINAMECC is now set up to provide the data it needs to do so.