Aligning Climate Change and Sustainable Development Policies in Asia

This book provides policymakers, researchers, and other interested audiences with knowledge on how to quantify and integrate and advance co-benefits in their decisions. It begins with an introductory chapter that provides an overview of the concept of co-benefits. This followed by a section that details quantitative approaches to estimate co-benefits, particularly in cities. A third section presents a series of case studies from the energy sector in Northeast and Southeast Asia. A final section focuses on new perspectives on co-benefits from linking climate change with biodiversity, social justice, and through new models of co-innovation. The book is particularly timely as many countries in Asia seek to achieve objectives in the national climate policies and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The climate emergency poses an increasingly severe threat to the health and well-being of more than a billion people in Asia. Policymakers in the region have sought to curb this threat by adopting clean energy, energy efficiency, and other sectoral policies. In some cases, these policies can bring additional benefits beyond mitigating climate change. These so-called “co-benefits” --ranging from improved air quality to better health to socioeconomic equity--could not only offset the costs of climate mitigation but also make Asia’s development more sustainable. Yet all too frequently policymakers lack the analytical methods and practical experiences to incorporate co-benefits into their decisions. This has created difficulties in aligning climate and sustainable development policies in Asia.

Hooman Farzaneh: Hooman Farzaneh is an associate professor at Kyushu University, Japan. He is particularly interested in issues related to quantitative and qualitative analysis and focusing on policy implementations designed to tackle air pollution problems at both regional and local scales. Prior to joining Kyushu University, Hooman worked at the Institute of Advanced Energy, Kyoto University and the United Nations University. Dr. Farzaneh has more than ten years of experience teaching energy-science-related subjects at various universities in Iran and Japan. He has received prestigious research awards from the Hitachi Global Foundation (2019-2020) and the Asia-Pacific Network (2017-2019) together with a scientific research grant from the Japan Society for Promotion of Science (2016-2019) for his research on multiple benefits assessment of the Low emission development strategies in Asian cities. His recent books include: "Energy Systems Modeling Principles and Applications- 2019" and "Devising a clean energy strategy in Asian cities-2018."

Eric Zusman: Eric Zusman is a senior policy researcher/area leader at the Institute for Global Environmental Studies in Hayama, Japan. Dr. Zusman holds a bachelor’s degree in Mandarin Chinese from Rutgers University, a dual Master’s Degree in public policy and Asian studies from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles. For much of the past two decades he has conducted research on environmental issues in Asia. This has included working with China’s Yellow River Conservancy Commission, the Chinese Research Academy on Environmental Science, Woodrow Wilson Center’s China Environment Forum as well as Taiwan’s Academia Sinica. He has published books and articles on water scarcity, air pollution regulation, environmental law, multilevel governance, sustainability transitions, low carbon development and the Sustainable Development Goals. He is currently serving as a lead author for the sixth assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Chapter 17).

Yeora Chae: Yeora Chae is a director of climate change, air quality and safety research group at Korea Environment Institute in Korea. Dr. Chae is specilised in integrated assessment of climate change and air pollution. She has been previously worked on “Integrated Program on Urban, Regional, and Global Air Pollution : Mexico City case study” project as a post doctoral associate with Prof. Mario Molina at MIT, USA.  First trained as a chemist at Ewha Women’s University, Korea, later specialized in Environmental studies.  She completed MSc in Climate Change with distinction at University of East Anglia, UK.   She obtained PhD. in climate change policy analysis with Dr. Chris Hope at University of Cambridge, UK. Her major research interest is integrated assessment of climate change and air pollution. Her recent research work includes “Analysis of economic impacts of climate change using PAGE model”, “Quantification of co-benefits between climate change and air quality policies, mitigation and adaptation policies”. She has published books and articles on climate change policy assessment and co-benefits analysis, heatwave impacts analysis.