Growing in the Greenhouse: Protecting the Climate by Putting Development First

This report explores an approach to reconciling development and climate priorities, termed sustainable development policies and measures (SD-PAMs).

This approach was first put forward in this form by Winkler et al. (2002) and describes policies and measures that are firmly within the national sustainable development priorities of the host country, but through inclusion in an international climate framework seeks to recognize, promote and support means of meeting these policy priorities on a lower-carbon trajectory.

The SD-PAMs approach has been the subject of some discussion within the climate change literature and has been presented as a component of a climate regime by the Climate Action Network (2003), among others. It has thus entered the climate policy vocabulary. However, a great deal of work remains to be done to explore the operational implications of SD-PAMs as part of an international policy framework.

This report is a contribution to that effort. We first discuss the merits and limitations of SD-PAMs (Chapter 1) and how an SD-PAMs pledging process might fit within the international policy context (Chapter 2). We then examine in detail four case studies of policy options in developing countries: Brazil’s use of biofuels for transport (Chapter 3), efficient urban transport in China (Chapter 4), options for rural electrification in India (Chapter 5) and carbon capture and storage in South Africa (Chapter 6).