Addressing the COVID-19 and climate crises
Potential economic recovery pathways and their implications for climate change mitigation,
NDCs and broader socio-economic goals
This paper provides decision-makers with a framework for prioritising different economic,
social and environmental goals and analysing the options available to achieve them.
To this end, it develops three stylised COVID-19 recovery pathways (“Rebound”, “Decoupling”
and “Wider well-being”) that differ in the extent to which they encompass greenhouse
gas (GHG) emission reductions and the integration of mitigation and wider well-being
outcomes or, broadly equivalently, SDGs. A number of real-world examples of COVID-19
recovery measures in the surface transport and residential sectors were identified,
and the paper maps these measures onto these three stylised pathways. The paper finds
a wide divergence in the environmental and social impacts of COVID-19 recovery measures
developed to date, with several countries putting in place measures that correspond
to all three pathways. The nature and pace of economic recovery in different countries
and in aggregate will have important implications for existing, updated and new Nationally
Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement, and the paper also highlights
the possible impact of the COVID-19 recovery measures being put in place on NDCs–
including on the ambition of both current and future NDCs. The paper concludes that
it will be important for governments to improve their understanding of the impact
of their recovery measures across multiple policy dimensions (economic, social, environmental)
as well as across different time periods (short and long-term) and spatial scales.
Published on December 18, 2020
In series:OECD/IEA Climate Change Expert Group Papersview more titles