OWG Proposed Target 9.4
RATING: FAIR – while it is important to deal with environmental externalities, the success (and benefit-cost analysis) will depend on the incentives and the ambition of the targets used to encourage retro-fitting of clean technologies. However, given environmental problems such as air pollution and climate change affect such a large number of people in developing countries now and in the future, there is a compelling case to incentivize actors to use technology to mitigate these problems.
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In our recent report, not just the target above, but all 169 targets have been assessed by 60 teams of the world’s top economists. The targets have been categorized into five ratings based on evidence of economic, social, and environmental costs and benefits. While we applaud that the UN Open Working Group's final outcome document contains 43 fewer targets than the previous document, we are concerned that many targets have simply been combined, therefore reducing the number of both phenomenal and poor targets assessed according to our cost-benefit analysis. Our new assessment includes suggestions for how these can be improved as reported in this article by the Financial Times.
