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The report identifies a significant gap between Mexico's current climate-aligned bond issuance and the investment required to meet its emissions targets, while outlining opportunities across energy, transport, buildings, and water sectors.

The report finds a significant lack of primary quantitative research on how fossil fuel subsidy reforms specifically affect women. It argues that while subsidies are generally regressive—benefiting wealthier households—their removal can disproportionately harm poor women due to their primary responsibility for domestic energy tasks and limited intra-household bargaining power. The document reviews the potential for mitigation measures, such as conditional cash transfers and targeted energy vouchers, and outlines a mixed-methods research plan for Bangladesh, India, and Nigeria to analyze impacts on women's welfare, productivity, and empowerment.

The briefing identifies six critical challenges to connecting climate action and sustainable development: creating a unified national narrative, developing integrated planning and policies, ensuring institutional coherence, adopting a whole-of-society approach, reforming finance, and aligning monitoring and reporting systems. It emphasizes that because climate change impacts development and the sectors driving development are the same as those critical for mitigation, treating these agendas as separate risks undermining both. The document highlights examples of integrated strategies in Ethiopia, Colombia, France, Gabon, and Bangladesh, while calling for a shift from fragmented bureaucratic silos toward systemic transformation and inclusive governance.

The research analyzes how climate finance investments generate economic value added not only in recipient countries but also in third countries through international trade, termed 'spill-overs'. Using a GMRIO model, the study finds that on average 28.6% of the total economic impact spills over to other countries. The ability to retain value added varies by country, with India and Brazil retaining around 80%, while Mexico and Indonesia retain no more than two thirds. The EU is the primary beneficiary of these spill-overs. The study also identifies that different types of climate actions produce varying levels of spill-overs: renewable energy technologies often generate high spill-overs (exceeding 35% for some), whereas forestry and coastal protection generate fewer than 20%. The authors suggest that donor countries may be influenced by these spill-over prospects when allocating funds, and recipient countries should improve industrial competitiveness to retain more economic gains.

The report examines the Watershared model, which uses local negotiations and non-economic incentives to encourage upstream landowners to protect forests for the benefit of downstream water users. Unlike national PES schemes, Watershared relies on social norms and local consensus, allowing participation from those without formal land titles and reducing bureaucratic overhead. In Bolivia, the model expanded from six farmers in 2003 to 4,500 families conserving 210,000 hectares by 2016. The approach is presented as a tool for climate compatible development, integrating mitigation through forest protection and adaptation through secured water supplies.

The guide examines the politics of climate change in three Latin American mega-cities, finding that while political leadership and local framing drive policy adoption, implementation is often hindered by a lack of broad social coalitions and low electoral salience of climate issues.

The report identifies a significant gap between Mexico's climate goals and its current green bond issuance, which stood at US $1.3bn in 2016. It highlights substantial investment needs, particularly in energy (US $5bn annually) and transport (US $12bn for multimodal projects), and argues that mobilizing private institutional capital through green bonds is essential to meet these targets.

The report analyzes various policy scenarios for China's energy transition, highlighting that carbon pricing and renewable energy standards are the most powerful tools for reducing emissions. It emphasizes that regulatory policies, particularly energy efficiency standards in buildings and industry, are highly cost-effective. The analysis suggests a transition toward a service-based economy and a decarbonized electricity grid to meet emissions peaking goals by 2030.

The Energy Efficiency Enabling Initiative is proposed as a private equity fund to address the funding gap in energy efficiency, particularly in emerging economies. By utilizing donor-backed concessional equity in a first-loss position and providing technical assistance, the fund aims to crowd in private institutional investors. A pilot fund of USD 100 million in countries such as Mexico and Colombia is estimated to generate 200-225 GWh of annual savings and abate 20-100 kt of CO2 per year. The initiative's structure relies on three pillars: a one-stop-shop fund with public finance equity, a guaranteed-risking facility for high-risk projects, and a technical assistance package for energy service providers and SMEs.

The document outlines the severe risks faced by environmental human rights defenders (EHRDs), particularly indigenous people and women in the Americas and Cambodia. It identifies the root causes of these threats as the prioritization of profit from resource extraction and large-scale development over community rights and environmental health. The authors argue that a legally binding regional agreement based on Principle 10 of the Rio Declaration is essential to guarantee access to information, public participation, and justice in Latin America and the Caribbean to protect EHRDs and hold both State and corporate actors accountable.

The document is a participant list for the 24th Conference of the Parties held in Santiago, Chile, from June 15-16, 2016. It identifies representatives from various national governments, including Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and the USA, as well as observers from FAPESP and Future Earth, and staff from the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research (IAI).

The South African beef industry is characterized by a split between commercial and communal production, with a supply chain that is largely vertically integrated. While South Africa is a net importer of beef, imports decreased by 36% between 2012 and 2013, increasing self-sufficiency. Key export markets include Mozambique and Europe, with high growth potential identified in Kuwait, the UAE, and the Seychelles, while Australia remains the primary source of imports.

The report finds that the CIF provides a unique, programmatic approach to climate finance that differs from the project-by-project model of the GCF. It has been the largest source of external concessional finance for Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs), particularly in high-risk technologies like geothermal and concentrated solar power. The authors recommend keeping the CIF operational to maintain momentum and bridge investment gaps, suggesting it work complementarily with the GCF.

The report explores the concept of 'policy crediting'—crediting emission reductions resulting from policy actions—as a means to encourage the implementation or strengthening of energy pricing and carbon pricing reforms. While noting that no real-world case examples of this currently exist, the study uses case studies from Morocco, Indonesia, Mexico, and Beijing to propose three generic options for policy crediting: supporting reductions at the policy margin, supporting reductions within the policy instrument, and overcoming implementation barriers. The author concludes that further work is required to develop monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) frameworks and to understand the political economy challenges associated with these approaches.

The document examines how climate mitigation projects—specifically under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), REDD+, and Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions (NAMAs)—have failed to uphold international human rights obligations. Through case studies in Panama, India, Mexico, and Georgia, it demonstrates that inadequate stakeholder consultation, lack of sustainable development criteria, and absent grievance mechanisms have led to rights violations, including forced evictions and loss of livelihoods. The brief argues that while the Paris Agreement's preamble recognizes human rights, these obligations must be translated into specific, mandatory guidelines and independent accountability processes to prevent future harm.

The report examines the potential for 'policy crediting' to incentivize developing countries to implement or strengthen carbon pricing and energy subsidy reforms. Through case studies in Morocco, Indonesia, Mexico, and China (Beijing), the study finds that the financial value of carbon credits is generally very low compared to the fiscal gains from the base policies themselves, suggesting that credits are unlikely to be the primary driver for policy adoption. However, the report argues that crediting could still play a role by supporting mitigation at the 'policy margin' (complementary measures), funding the operational strengthening of ETS markets, or providing targeted compensation to vulnerable stakeholders. The authors highlight significant challenges in establishing baselines and monitoring, reporting, and verification (MRV) for policy-level reductions compared to project-level offsets.

The document analyzes the Paris Agreement's achievements and outlines a detailed pathway for operationalizing its ten core elements: mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, finance, technology transfer, capacity building, transparency, global stocktake, compliance, and cooperative approaches. It emphasizes the need for clear accounting rules, scaled-up finance, and robust transparency frameworks to ensure environmental integrity and increase ambition over time.

The document provides an Environmental and Social Management Framework (ESMF) for a project aimed at conserving freshwater, marine, and coastal resources in the Mesoamerican Reef System (MAR). It defines the institutional roles of the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) and partner NGOs, establishes a project classification system (Categories A, B, and C) based on risk, and outlines procedures for Environmental and Social Impact Assessments (ESIAs). The framework identifies priority river basins—including the Hondo, Motagua, Belice, Chamelecón, and Ulúa—and details the threats facing the reef, such as agricultural runoff, deforestation, and urban waste. It also sets strict safeguards for indigenous peoples, involuntary resettlement, and the use of hazardous pesticides, while proposing various 'ridge-to-reef' interventions like agroforestry and habitat restoration.

The Mexican gray wolf (Canis lupus baileyi) is one of North America's most endangered mammals, with a wild population of only 113 individuals as of February 2017. Historically found across the southwestern U.S. and Mexico, the subspecies was nearly eliminated by the livestock industry and government agents. Current recovery efforts are hampered by poor genetic diversity, as all existing wild wolves descend from just seven captive ancestors. Earthjustice argues that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's 2017 Recovery Plan is flawed because it limits wolves to inadequate habitats, fails to provide sufficient wild releases, and ignores scientific recommendations to establish three interconnected populations totaling at least 750 individuals across Arizona, New Mexico, the Grand Canyon, and southern Colorado.

Gustavo Castro Soto thanks the international community and Friends of the Earth for the solidarity and pressure that secured his release from illegal detention in Honduras in March 2016, following the murder of activist Berta Cáceres.