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Abstract The buildings and construction sector is responsible for nearly 40% of the total greenhouse emissions (GHG). Considering 50% of the building stock that will exist in 2050 is yet to be built and most of it will be devoted to housing; the sector is a determinant and transformative force to strengthen sustainability, reducing CO2 emissions and environmental degradation worldwide. Most of the increase in construction and housing is set to occur in developing countries and mainly in cities in Asia and Africa. This global picture places new housing programs in the rapidly urbanising regions as potential agents of sustainable transformation, with positive outcomes for both communities and the environment. Investing in sustainable housing has significant and real value in reducing emissions, confronting climate change, and generating better planned, inclusive, and sustainable cities. The holistic benefit achieved with the implementation of carbon neutral and carbon negative technologies is often scattered, and an integrated view of it would be a key tool to support the development of sustainable housing programmes. Considering that technologies to decarbonize and render the construction sector more sustainable have already been developed, there is a need to contrast their applicability to different countries and contexts in order to verify their functionality and identify gaps for improvement. The recent decade has witnessed a significant improvement at the global level with regards to the application of the concept of sustainability to the built environment, this being demonstrated by the multiple sustainability ratings and frameworks being developed to certify building performance. Their adoption has been critically important in most regions in the so-called Global North, where countries have started enforcing them at a normative level. While these tools’ accuracy and comprehensiveness could be disputed, their importance in promoting a systematic standardisation of the adoption of sustainability measures in the built environment is endorsed. Nevertheless, the diffusion of such tools and frameworks across rapidly urbanising middle and low-income countries has been so far extremely limited. There are myriad reasons why this is the case: tools based for high-income country contexts, their complexity, the need for accurate data and specific capacity for their adoption and diffusion, the lack of contextual relevance with regards to the specific market, culture and behavioural dynamics, and more. The following paper aims at demonstrating the value of shifting toward sustainable building practices by a comparative analysis of existing global tools and certifications and their applicability to low and middle-income countries undergoing a rapid urbanisation process. It proposes a three-phased multi-stakeholders methodology. The outcome of these three phases is combined, providing a more appropriate definition of effective and operative guidelines and tools for sustainable housing in rapidly urbanising middle and lowincome regions.

Using the economic complexity methodology on data for disease prevalence in 195 countries during the period of 1990-2016, we propose two new metrics for quantifying the disease space of countries. With these metrics, we analyze the geography of diseases and empirically investigate the effect of economic development on the health complexity of countries. We show that a higher income per capita increases the complexity of countries’ diseases. We also show that complex diseases tend to be non-ubiquitous diseases that are prevalent in disease-diversified (complex) countries, while non-complex diseases tend to be non-ubiquitous diseases that are prevalent in non-diversified (non-complex) countries. Furthermore, we build a disease-level index that links a disease to the average level of GDP per capita of the countries in which the disease is prevalent. With this index, we highlight the link between economic development and the complexity of diseases and illustrate how increases in income per capita are associated with more complex diseases.

Because private foundations have only modest financial resources compared to public and private-sector research funding, the only way in which foundations can play a key role is in the initial and risk financing of gap areas. This is generally in what is known as the 'valley of death', but even there an additional focus is needed. One promising field is the very early-stage support for high-risk but high-potential business cases in order to increase the number of start-ups, not only but very often in the field of life sciences. The pre-seed fund venture kick, an initiative by private foundations, is a good example of success. There is still a gap in the innovation chain in Switzerland from the first research results to becoming a successful life science company. However, for the first time promising solutions are on the way, and here too, foundations can play an important role.

Abstract Oil and its derivatives are crucial components of economic growth and prosperity globally. The economic and social gains from producing, trading, and consuming oil are readily estimated and observed. However, during each of the phases of oil production and trade, beginning with exploration and extraction, physical damages, injuries and fatalities, and economic losses are frequently incurred from accidents such as pipeline explosions. Specifically, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries consume the majority of the oil produced annually yet most accidents occur in non-OECD countries. Drawing from the input–output analysis literature, this paper uses a one-dimensional accounting method based on trade data to determine the crude oil consumption fatality rates of the OECD countries annually between 1978 and 2008. This analysis results in meaningful changes to production based fatality calculations. In particular, OECD countries import the majority of their annual fatality rates from non-OECD countries. Based on 5 patterns that emerge, the authors postulate that historical trade relationships, differential policies and regulations, as well as levels of technology adoption, may influence these outcomes. This fundamental analysis applies the now-popular consumption-based accounting method taken from multi-regional input–output and life-cycle assessment to a risk assessment setting. The authors introduce the method in this setting such that, as in the case of embodied emissions, it can act as a basis for further econometric analyses, develop more awareness and a greater sense of shared, international responsibility, as well as instruct policy changes for best practices in the field of energy.

AbstractIn this paper, we analyze the relationship between economic complexity and environmental performance using annual data on 88 developed and developing countries for the period of 2002–2012. We use the Economic Complexity Index, which links a country’s productive structure with the amount of knowledge and know-how embodied in the goods it produces, and the Environmental Performance Index as a measure of environmental performance. We show that moving to higher levels of economic complexity leads to better overall environmental performance, which means that sophistication of exported products does not induce environmental degradation. Nevertheless, we find that the effect of economic complexity on air quality is negative, i.e., exposure to PM2.5, CO$$_2$$ 2 , methane and nitrous oxide emissions increases, and these findings are robust across alternative econometric specifications.

Abstract Africa is well endowed with potential for hydro and solar power, but its other endowments – shortages of capital, skills, and governance capacity – make most of the green options relatively expensive, while its abundance of hydro-carbons makes fossil fuels relatively cheap. Current power shortages make expansion of power capacity a priority. Africa's endowments, and the consequent scarcities and relative prices, are not immutable and can be changed to bring opportunity costs in Africa closer to those in the rest of the world. The international community can support by increasing Africa's supply of the scarce factors of capital, skills, and governance.

Abstract This study investigates the distributional implications of the revenue-neutral carbon tax policy in British Columbia. We use a computable general equilibrium (CGE) model of the Canadian economy and disaggregate households into deciles by annual income using data from a large household expenditure survey. Using the model, we find that the existing BC carbon tax is highly progressive even prior to consideration of the revenue recycling scheme, such that the negative impact of the carbon tax on households with below-median income is smaller than that on households with above-median income. We show that our finding is a result of welfare effects of a carbon tax being determined primarily by the source of a households’ income rather than by the destination of its expenditures. Finally, we show that the existing revenue recycling scheme is also progressive. Overall, the tax appears to be highly progressive.