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Background Scientists have raised concerns about whether high-income countries, with their high per-capita CO2 emissions, can decarbonise fast enough to meet their obligations under the Paris Agreement if they continue to pursue aggregate economic growth. Over the past decade, some countries have reduced their CO2 emissions while increasing their gross domestic product (absolute decoupling). Politicians and media have hailed this as green growth. In this empirical study, we aimed to assess whether these achievements are consistent with the Paris Agreement, and whether Paris-compliant decoupling is within reach.

Gestational exposure to ambient fine particles (PM2.5) increases the risk of stillbirth, but the related disease burden is unknown, particularly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). We combine state-of-the-art estimates on stillbirths, and multiple exposure–response functions obtained from previous meta-analyses or derived by a self-matched case-control study in 54 LMICs. 13,870 stillbirths and 32,449 livebirths are extracted from 113 geocoded surveys from the Demographic and Health Surveys. Each stillbirth is compared to livebirth(s) of the same mother using a conditional logit regression. We find that 10-µg/m3 increase of PM2.5 is associated with an 11.0% (95% confidence interval [CI] 6.4, 15.7) increase in the risk of stillbirth, and the association is significantly enhanced by maternal age. Based on age-specific nonlinear PM2.5–stillbirth curves, we evaluate the PM2.5-related stillbirths in 137 countries. In 2015, of 2.09 (95% CI: 1.98, 2.20) million stillbirths, 0.83 (0.54, 1.08) million or 39.7%

In Paris, all governments solemnly promised to come to COP26 with more ambitious 2030 commitments to close the massive 2030 emissions gap that was already evident in 2015. Three years later the IPCC Special Report on 1.5°C reinforced the scientific imperative, and earlier this year it called a climate “code red.” Now, at the midpoint of Glasgow, it is clear there is a massive credibility, action and commitment gap that casts a long and dark shadow of doubt over the net zero goals put forward by more than 140 countries, covering 90% of global emissions.

xcept for specialized resource economics models, economics pays little attention to the role of energy in growth. This paper highlights basic difficulties behind the mainstream analytical arguments for this neglect, and provides an empirical reassessment of this role. We use an error correction model in order to estimate the long-run dependency ratio of output with respect to primary energy use in 33 countries between 1970 and 2011

In recent years, governments of several low-income countries have taken decisive action by removing fully or partially user fees in the health sector. In this study, we review recent reforms in six sub-Saharan African countries: Burkina Faso, Burundi, Ghana, Liberia, Senegal and Uganda. The review d …