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The document outlines the results of the first Rapid Trade and Environment Assessment (RTEA) conducted in Africa, focusing on Namibia. It argues that Namibia should avoid a bulk export industrial model and instead leverage its comparative advantages in high-value niche sectors such as eco-tourism, natural products, and carbon offsets. The brief identifies a need for better inter-sectoral coordination and a national forum to monitor international green labeling and certification standards that could act as technical barriers to trade.

The document outlines the political transition in Guinea following the 2010 presidential election of Alpha Condé. It highlights a context of economic ruin, widespread poverty, and ethno-political violence. The brief recommends five priority areas for the new administration: national reconciliation, inclusive governance, fighting impunity, security sector reform, and improving living conditions for the population.

The policy brief identifies a gap between the climate commitments of institutional investors and their actual impact on corporate behavior, citing limited transparency and high barriers to shareholder action. It proposes four primary reforms to the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) II: introducing a mandatory 'Say on Climate' vote every three years, ensuring legal security for submitting environmental resolutions, increasing transparency requirements for asset owners, managers, and proxy advisors, and lowering the shareholding threshold for submitting resolutions to a maximum of 2% (and 0.2% for large companies).

This policy brief by the Johns Hopkins SAIS China-Africa Research Initiative (CARI) examines two distinct models of Chinese agricultural investment in Africa through case studies in Ghana and Nigeria. It contrasts a small-scale, private entrepreneurial model in Ghana with a large-scale, state-backed public-private partnership in Nigeria, analyzing their motivations, land acquisition challenges, and social impacts.

The document examines the role of carbon offsets in climate policy, highlighting their ability to reduce mitigation costs and provide sustainability co-benefits. However, it identifies significant risks including additionality, permanence, leakage, and quantification errors. Through a 'road test' of various protocols, the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) demonstrates that the amount of offsets credited for the same project can vary by a factor of 2 or more. The brief recommends that offsets be used as transitional tools and that protocols be standardized to ensure consistent calculation of emission reduction credits.

This policy brief from the MEDIATION project evaluates the use of Cost-Effectiveness Analysis (CEA) as a decision support tool for climate change adaptation. While CEA is a primary tool for mitigation, the document highlights that its application to adaptation is more challenging due to the lack of a single common metric and the critical need to account for uncertainty.

The document argues that agroforestry provides a viable alternative to monoculture reforestation and intensified agriculture by creating multi-functional land-use systems. It highlights that 'land-sharing' through agroforestry can actually support 'land-sparing' by reducing the pressure to deforest for agricultural expansion. Using case studies from Sri Lanka and Vietnam, the brief demonstrates how home gardens and forest gardens increase tree cover and improve rural resilience. It also notes the success of nitrogen-fixing species in Africa and the use of rubber and cocoa agroforests in Indonesia and globally. The authors conclude that successful implementation requires secure land tenure, local context-specific choices, and inter-agency collaboration.

The document argues that multi-layered home gardens incorporating trees, shrubs, and crops enhance food security, nutrition, and climate resilience. It identifies key barriers to their development, such as insecure land tenure and water scarcity, and suggests that integrating home gardens into climate finance mechanisms like REDD+ could provide new opportunities for expansion.

Barrancabermeja faces a high structural dependence on the hydrocarbon sector, particularly the Ecopetrol refinery, which creates fiscal and labor risks. While gasoline demand may remain stable until 2035, the document warns of a structural crisis thereafter. It recommends a 'very rapid transition' policy to accelerate economic reconversion into bio-industrial services using oil palm biomass, ecotourism, and the creation of a Free Trade Zone to ensure a just economic transition.

The document argues that Colombia's forestry sector, despite its resilience to COVID-19, faces systemic challenges including high informality, lack of unified institutional vision, and inadequate financing. It highlights that 42% of produced timber is estimated to be illegal and that deforestation persisted during the pandemic, with over 75,000 hectares lost in the Colombian Amazon in early 2020. The brief recommends strengthening the Forest Monitoring and Carbon System (SMByC), creating a national forestry observatory, reforming the Forest Incentive Certificate (CIF), and promoting community forestry concessions to integrate small producers into the formal economy and meet 2030 GDP targets for the forestry economy.

The document uses a System Dynamics simulation model to project the Colombian vehicle fleet's evolution from 2025 to 2050. It finds that while annual GNV consumption is projected to decrease by approximately 43% by 2050, the fuel will not disappear on its own due to systemic inertia and the gradual replacement of vehicles. The analysis highlights that traditional buses may actually see an increase in GNV vehicles due to decentralized decision-making and high initial costs of electric alternatives. Cumulatively, the transport sector would demand over 40 billion cubic meters of GNV and emit more than 70 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent by 2050, which represents a significant portion of Colombia's NDC 3.0 commitments. The brief concludes that maintaining GNV demand creates a financial burden of over 200 trillion constant pesos and pressures limited national gas reserves, suggesting that a clear public direction toward zero-emission technologies is necessary to avoid long-term fossil fuel lock-in.

The document analyzes how the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated structural inequalities in Latin America, specifically affecting women's labor participation and health, the vulnerability of indigenous populations regarding food security and healthcare, and the slow integration of green jobs into economic recovery plans. It provides detailed case studies for Mexico, Chile, and Colombia, highlighting gaps in public spending and the need for intersectional policies, improved data collection, and a transition toward a sustainable, low-carbon economy that ensures decent work and social justice.

The document describes a market-based 'pre-compliance conservation' pilot initiative targeting the gopher tortoise in the southern United States. This voluntary marketplace allows landowners to receive payments for managing forests to support the species, while project developers can buy conservation credits to mitigate habitat disturbance and reduce regulatory risks associated with the Endangered Species Act (ESA).

The World Resources Institute identifies three main drivers for European businesses switching to renewable energy: the potential for lower or stabilized energy costs, the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and airborne pollutants to mitigate regulatory and financial risks, and the improvement of corporate image and relationships with stakeholders such as customers, employees, and shareholders.

The policy brief highlights that forests influence the climate through four key non-carbon biophysical processes: albedo, evapotranspiration, surface roughness, and aerosols. It argues that focusing solely on carbon underestimates the cooling value of tropical forests and ignores local temperature spikes caused by deforestation. The authors propose six specific ways for UNFCCC Parties to integrate these effects into national greenhouse gas inventories, Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), REDD+ reporting, adaptation planning, the Global Stocktake, and the IPCC's Seventh Assessment Report (AR7).

The document highlights that tropical deforestation contributes 50% more to global warming than carbon emissions alone due to biophysical processes like albedo, evapotranspiration, surface roughness, and aerosols. These non-carbon effects cause local temperature spikes and regional rainfall disruptions, leading to direct productivity losses in commodities such as soy and impacting worker safety through heat stress. It calls on companies and financial institutions to move beyond reputational risk management and address these material operational risks through jurisdictional cooperation, improved spatial research, and stricter portfolio alignment.