TY - JOUR
T1 - What are the social outcomes of climate policies? A systematic map and review of the ex-post literature
AU - Lamb, William F.
AU - Antal, Miklós
AU - Bohnenberger, Katharina
AU - Brand-Correa, Lina I.
AU - Müller-Hansen, Finn
AU - Jakob, Michael
AU - Minx, Jan C.
AU - Raiser, Kilian
AU - Williams, Laurence
AU - Sovacool, Benjamin K.
PY - 2020/11
Y1 - 2020/11
N2 - It is critical to ensure climate and energy policies are just, equitable and beneficial for communities, both to sustain public support for decarbonisation and address multifaceted societal challenges. Our objective in this article is to examine the diverse social outcomes that have resulted from climate policies, in varying contexts worldwide, over the past few decades. We review 203 ex-post climate policy assessments that analyse social outcomes in the literature. We systematically and comprehensively map out this work, identifying articles on carbon, energy and transport taxes, feed-in-tariffs, subsidies, direct procurement policies, large renewable deployment projects, and other regulatory and market-based interventions. We code each article in terms of their studied social outcomes and effects, with a focus on electricity access, energy affordability, community cohesion, employment, distributional and equity issues, livelihoods and poverty, procedural justice, subjective well-being and drudgery. Our analysis finds that climate and energy policies often fall short of delivering positive social outcomes. Nonetheless, across country contexts and policy types there are manifold examples of climate policymaking that does deliver on both social and climate goals. This requires attending to distributive and procedural justice in policy design, and making use of appropriate mechanisms to ensure that policy costs and benefits are fairly shared. We emphasize the need to further advance ex-post policy assessments and learn about what policies work for a just transition.
AB - It is critical to ensure climate and energy policies are just, equitable and beneficial for communities, both to sustain public support for decarbonisation and address multifaceted societal challenges. Our objective in this article is to examine the diverse social outcomes that have resulted from climate policies, in varying contexts worldwide, over the past few decades. We review 203 ex-post climate policy assessments that analyse social outcomes in the literature. We systematically and comprehensively map out this work, identifying articles on carbon, energy and transport taxes, feed-in-tariffs, subsidies, direct procurement policies, large renewable deployment projects, and other regulatory and market-based interventions. We code each article in terms of their studied social outcomes and effects, with a focus on electricity access, energy affordability, community cohesion, employment, distributional and equity issues, livelihoods and poverty, procedural justice, subjective well-being and drudgery. Our analysis finds that climate and energy policies often fall short of delivering positive social outcomes. Nonetheless, across country contexts and policy types there are manifold examples of climate policymaking that does deliver on both social and climate goals. This requires attending to distributive and procedural justice in policy design, and making use of appropriate mechanisms to ensure that policy costs and benefits are fairly shared. We emphasize the need to further advance ex-post policy assessments and learn about what policies work for a just transition.
KW - climate policy
KW - distributional outcomes
KW - energy policy
KW - equity
KW - just transitions
KW - social outcomes
KW - systematic review
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85096864136&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1088/1748-9326/abc11f
DO - 10.1088/1748-9326/abc11f
M3 - Review
AN - SCOPUS:85096864136
SN - 1748-9318
VL - 15
JO - Environmental Research Letters
JF - Environmental Research Letters
IS - 11
M1 - 113006
ER -