Conference Agenda

WEIRD is not Enough for Achieving Regenerative Ocean Economies\n\nRashid Sumaila, University of British Columbia, Canada\nConventional economics in its mainstream and business-oriented form, has too often been guided by a narrow logic of short-term profit maximization, quarterly returns, and the relentless extraction of value from nature. I argue that this model, which may be described as WEIRD economics, shaped by assumptions rooted in Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, is not enough to achieve regenerative ocean economies. The problem is not economic theory itself, but the form of economics that has become dominant, where success is measured mainly by immediate financial gain, living systems are treated as inputs, or commodities rather than as the ecological foundations of human wellbeing. In the case of the ocean, this logic has contributed to the overexploitation of fish stocks, the degradation of marine habitats, and the normalization of practices that undermine long-term resilience, e.g., bottom trawling. Here, I suggest ways to extend WEIRD economics with Indigenous and Granny wisdom to make it more fit for purpose.

A globally harmonized carbon price has long been considered the most efficient way to address climate change, understood as a solution to global externality. It lies at the heart of questions about efficiency, fairness, and institutional design, all core concerns of environmental and resource economics. However, after decades of progress in national and regional carbon markets, from the EU ETS to new initiatives in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, the world still faces a fragmented landscape of carbon prices and policies. This session will connect theory with practice, examining how international coordination, market integration, and climate finance could help transform the idea of global carbon pricing into a feasible and effective policy reality. In particular, this panel will investigate whether it is possible to move from a patchwork of local schemes toward a more coherent global framework. Drawing on insights from economic theory and practical experience, leading experts from academia, policymaking, and international institutions worldwide will explore the opportunities and barriers to convergence. Discussion will cover the economics of linking emissions trading systems, the challenges of balancing efficiency with equity, and the prospects for cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement.

Climate change and nature degradation are not just “long-run” concerns for environmental policy—they are believed to be near-term sources of financial and macroeconomic risk. However, uncertainties around the implications of climate change for the real economy and the financial markets make it hard to generate precise projections of macro-financial stability under rising climate hazards. Yet, policymakers and financial institutions are in pressing need of risk policies in response to the economic and financial impacts of climate change and nature degradation.This session will convene a panel of experts in climate financial risks to discuss the latest scientific advancements and their repercussions for policymakers and businesses. The session will discuss how physical risks (e.g., floods, wildfires, heat stress) can propagate through banks, insurers, households, firms, and sovereign balance sheets—often in ways that standard risk models struggle to capture under deep uncertainty. We will discuss possible transmission channels from hazards to balance sheets: productivity and capital damage, supply-chain disruptions, insurance withdrawal/repricing, collateral and asset-value losses, credit impairment, and fiscal pressure. The session will also discuss methodological developments for scenario generation of sovereign risks under climate hazards, in the face of deep uncertainty on the macro-economic impacts, the transmission channels to the financial system, and the role of adaptation.For environmental and natural resource economists, the agenda of this session is central. It leverages work done by the community, including empirical and process-based estimates of the impacts of climate change and nature degradation on real and financial economy; ex-ante evaluation of macro-prudential policies to manage climate risks; scenario generation accounting for climatic and socio-economic feedbacks; decision-making under deep uncertainty. These methods can inform high-stake decisions, and will be discussed in the context of their application to finance ministries, central banks and related institutions such as the NGFS, as well as recently established academic initiatives to bridge the gap between environmental economics research, policy engagement and the private sector.\nThis event has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101081604 - PRISMA. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Climate, Infrastructure and Environment Executive Agency (CINEA). Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.

Scientific publishing is a cornerstone of the science–policy–business interface. In environmental and resource economics, peer-reviewed journals, book series, and policy-oriented publication outlets play a decisive role in shaping research agendas, informing public policy, and guiding private-sector and investment decisions on pressing global challenges such as climate change, water security, energy transitions, and sustainability.\nThis Science–Policy–Business Session brings together Editors-in-Chief and senior editors from leading journals and book series in Environmental and Resource Economics, Sustainability, Climate Action, and Water Economics. The session aims to provide WCERE 2026 participants with a strategic overview of the contemporary publishing landscape, editorial standards, and emerging trends—including open science, interdisciplinarity, and policy-oriented publication formats—and to explore how academic research can more effectively reach policymakers and societal stakeholders through targeted publication strategies.\nDesigned for a broad audience of environmental and resource economists, the session combines short expert presentations with an interactive roundtable discussion. Participants will have the opportunity to engage directly with editors on publication strategy, peer-review processes, impact beyond academia, and the evolving role of scientific journals as key intermediaries between research excellence, public policy, and business practice.\n\n

Theme: Drawing on the Coalition of Finance Ministers for Climate Action flagship initiative on Economic Analysis for Green and Resilient Transitions, this session will explore how the environmental economics research community can ensure its work directly responds to the analytical needs and most pressing policy questions Ministries of Finance (MoFs) face as they seek to mainstream climate considerations into economic decision-making and support the design of climate policy packages. The focus will be on strengthening the practical usefulness of economic analysis tools and methods for MoFs, particularly given the scale, complexity, and uncertainty associated with climate risks and green transitions.\n \nRelevance to environmental or natural resource economists: For researchers, the session provides an opportunity to explore and reflect on how analytical approaches can better serve public-sector economic institutions. MoFs are major users of economic analysis for policy design, budgeting, investment planning, and risk assessment. Ensuring that the economic analyses and tools developed by the research community are accessible, transparent, and grounded in the realities of policymaking is essential for supporting effective climate-informed economic decisions. The MoF-led Economic Analysis for Green and Resilient Transitions initiative highlights several priorities that will be explored: focusing research on the needs of MoFs and other economic stakeholders, developing tools that are simple, transparent, and useable across different levels of analytical capacity, and encouraging further inter-model comparison and the assessment of model performance to ensure evidence is robust.\n \nMotivation and framing: MoFs play a critical role in realising green and resilient transitions through whole-of-government action given their responsibility for budgets, investment strategies, and economic policy. Robust analysis of the direct and indirect impacts of climate change and the economic implications of transitioning to green and resilient economies is fundamental to this role. However, many MoFs lack analytical tools that help them answer the questions they face in practice. Existing tools can be overly complex, opaque, or geared towards stylised scenarios rather than the concrete policy decisions Ministries must make, leaving governments without practical options that can be readily applied, maintained, or updated.\n\nThis underscores the opportunity for national and regional analytical ecosystems of universities, government institutions, and international organisations to develop fit-for-purpose methods and analyses to support decision-makers. A recent world-first, extensive review of existing analytical tools relevant to MoFs points to areas where improvements could be especially valuable: integrating physical climate risks and adaptation into macroeconomic analysis; assessing uncertainty at scale; analysing combinations of policy measures; understanding technology-cost trajectories; evaluating competitiveness implications of climate and climate-related trade policies; examining co-benefits and non-market impacts; incorporating financial system linkages; and assessing distributional effects across different groups.\n\nThe purpose of the session is to discuss these MoF needs with the research community and to encourage closer, ongoing engagement between academic institutions and Ministries of Finance. By aligning research agendas with the fiscal, macroeconomic, and policy assessment challenges MoFs face, designing tools that are accessible and relevant to day-to-day decision-making, and engaging directly with MoF analysts and policymakers in development processes, the research community can help strengthen climate-informed economic policymaking.

There is a growing recognition that power delivered unreliably cannot jumpstart economic growth and structural transformation, and that the economic and environmental costs of technical and non-technical losses for utilities are potentially high. Nevertheless, utilities around the world struggle to improve service quality, particularly in low-income settings. This session will bring together a panel of energy economists, regulators, utility managers, and funders to discuss why service quality improvements have proven so intractable and what novel ideas may help push forward an agenda on reliability. By bringing insights from policymakers, funders, and utility managers, the session will push the audience to consider the gap between theoretical policy design and the practical constraints facing utilities in the developing world. 

The economic literature is increasingly clear that Pigovian taxes alone are insufficient for stimulating green transitions. Acemoğlu et al. (2012) concluded that multiple market failures need to be addressed to direct the economy to a more sustainable trajectory. Mattauch et al. (2022) illustrated this to not only hold for endogenous technologies but also for endogenous preferences. These findings have however hardly found their way to policy-making. In this session, three leading economists working on green transitions will discuss key insights from their work with policy makers, and the audience, and reflect on policy implications. Key questions include: \n\nHow to adopt policies radical enough to shift the economy to a net-zero emission equilibrium? \nHow to design green transition policies given deep uncertainty, coordination problems, and non-linear dynamics amidst shifting political winds? \nHow to sequence policy interventions and implement effective and efficient policy mixes? \n

The Inclusive Forum on Carbon Mitigation Approaches (IFCMA) is the OECD’s flagship initiative designed to help optimise the global impact of emissions reduction efforts around the world through better data and information sharing, evidence-based mutual learning and inclusive multilateral dialogue. The IFCMA brings together all relevant policy perspectives from a diverse range of countries from around the world, participating on an equal footing basis, to take stock of and consider the effectiveness of different mitigation approaches, and explore interoperable approaches to measuring the carbon intensity of products.\n\nIFCMA has released the first edition of its Climate Policy Database. Currently covering around 1 600 climate change mitigation policy instruments, the Database offers granular insights across the full range of policies adopted by countries. This includes information on subsidies, taxes, emissions trading systems, technology and performance standards, as well as framework regulations and labelling schemes. It builds on the IFCMA Typology agreed by IFCMA members last year, which for the first time enables countries to classify climate change mitigation policies in a consistent and comparable way. Over time, IFCMA will continue to expand the Database to include additional instruments and countries.\n\nBy taking stock of different mitigation approaches, mapping policies to the emissions they cover, and estimating their domestic and international impact, the IFCMA is enhancing understanding of the full spectrum of mitigation approaches deployed around the world and their combined global impact. Simultaneously, by bringing governments and other stakeholders together to explore ways to develop and implement interoperable approaches to measure carbon intensity metrics, the IFCMA will help to limit administrative costs and firms’ reporting burdens, improve transparency and avoid fragmentation of international supply chains.

Over the past decade, carbon pricing has attracted growing attention across both developed and developing economies, accompanied by increasingly diverse institutional designs. China’s ETS is transitioning from an intensity-based to an absolute cap-based framework, while India and Brazil are exploring and refining market-based carbon pricing approaches suited to their national contexts. These evolving policy choices reflect distinct economic structures, development priorities, and governance capacities.   \n \nAt the same time, carbon markets in the Global South are increasingly shaped by global economic integration and evolving climate–trade linkages. Policy developments in advanced economies, such as the EU CBAM, have intensified concerns over competitiveness, carbon leakage, and cross-border policy interactions, with direct implications for emerging and developing economies.  \n \nTogether, these developments raise a central economic question: how do differences in carbon pricing design affect efficiency, cost effectiveness, and mitigation incentives, and which design features may offer transferable lessons for other developing and emerging economies as they consider carbon market development? They also prompt further inquiry into where international cooperation can add value, whether through market design principles, policy coordination, or cross-border mechanisms.  \n \nThis session examines carbon markets from a Global South perspective, focusing on how emerging economies design and adapt carbon pricing instruments and what these experiences imply for international coordination. The session explores when and how cooperation may be economically justified, and how alternative forms of coordination influence mitigation costs, competitiveness, and equity across countries at different stages of development. By bringing together insights from economic research, policy practice, and real-world implementation, the session highlights the Global South’s growing role in shaping the future of carbon markets and international climate cooperation.

Under the pressure of the triple planetary crises (climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution increase), the use of voluntary instruments, soft instruments (e.g. education and information) and of regulatory (command & control) instruments does not seem sufficient to achieve the ambitious but necessary environmental targets that the scientific community, the global policy community and most Countries have given themselves.\n \nMany economic instruments have been developed, but the share of environmental taxation remains low in most tax systems. Several questions emerge:\n\n\n\nAre the experiences with ETR to date and the changing political environment should lead us to reconsider some elements of ETR - either tactically (i.e. with a view to increasing the probability of success) or fundamentally (i.e. some real re-considerations of the framework may be useful - approaches like focus on the investment side of things and policy packages.\nCould policy-makers make more use of economic instruments (e.g. taxes with an environmental impact, environmental fees and charges, deposit/refund systems, removal of environmentally harmful subsidies and introduction of environmentally friendly subsidies, creation of markets like ETS and water rights)? Are international competitivity, potential regressive and social impacts, reduction of tax bases good reasons to avoid a significant shift of taxation from salaries and companies towards pollution, emissions and the use of natural resources?\nIf policymakers wish to help the poor and vulnerable citizens, or sectors exposed to international competition (say truck drivers and agriculture) should they do it by discounts on fossil fuel taxes? Do we have alternative instruments?\nThere is an increasing attention to energy poverty: but should policymakers be interested only (or with high priority) to energy poverty, or should they not consider also food poverty, water poverty, health poverty, housing poverty, …? i.e. general poverty, poverty \"tout court\", all forms of poverty together?\nEnergy taxation is considered too high in many countries; the increasing demand for energy by data centres and IA seems to be considered an independent variable; would demand be increasing so intensively if they had to pay the environmental and social costs, starting with climate change?\nCan the restructuring of fiscal systems help to internalize environmental costs and recognize environmental values? Would this distort prices, markets and international trade, as some analysts propose? Would it reduce or increase effectiveness and efficiency of economic systems?\nShould policymakers secure public revenue and strengthen energy security by reducing energy process and other taxes with a positive environmental impact?\n\n\n

Transport is lagging behind other sectors on the path towards decarbonization. Whereas theoretical ideas exist to address this problem, for example in the form of Pigovian pricing or information-based interventions, not much is known about the effectiveness of such policies. This session contains four randomized controlled trials that measure the causal effects of different transport policies in real-world settings in Finland, Germany, Norway and Switzerland. All studies are based on revealed preferences measured via GPS tracking. They show that policy can be effective in reducing the external costs and support a shift away from driving towards more sustainable modes of transport. 

Poor air quality, both ambient and indoor, is a pressing concern worldwide, leading to millions of lives lost as well as significant losses in productivity, among other effects. This session brings together evidence on causes and consequences of air pollution exposure in settings characterized by different levels of air pollution and income. The first two papers show how information about indoor air quality at home drives behavior change and reduction in exposure both in a sample of UK households who were randomly assigned a sensor and in a sample of US households who purchased an air quality sensor, although the defensive behaviors adopted appear different. The third paper, however, provides a cautionary tale where information alone does not appear to increase adoption of air purifiers in Bangladesh, and findings suggest household do not value air purifiers. Given that indoor and outdoor air pollution exposure exceeds WHO guidelines in most of the world, the last two papers in the session set out to estimate the consequences in terms of workplace behavior and productivity. The fourth paper examines air pollution exposure effects for delivery workers in Italy and finds that air pollution increases the risk of accidents and decreases productivity, which workers try to make up by working longer hours, thus putting themselves at higher risk. The fifth paper examines the effects of air purification on high-skill workers, namely attendees to academic conferences in Colombia and India. It finds that despite improved air quality, air purifiers do not affect conference engagement and participants’ behavior, thus suggesting these might not be the main drivers of productivity effects. 

This session brings together four papers across different markets and experimental settings that study how pricing, incentives, and automation affect electricity demand, with implications for system costs and grid management in power systems with high renewable penetration. The focus is on household and electric vehicle demand response, and on the roles of technology, effort, and behavioral frictions.\n \nBailey et al. show in a field experiment that fully automated demand response delivers substantially larger peak-load reductions than programs requiring any active household participation, even when smart technologies are provided. Metcalfe et al. evaluate a large-scale AI-managed EV charging tariff and find substantial peak demand reductions through automated load shifting, with low override rates and sizable consumer and system benefits. Ovaere and Vergouwen show that dynamic retail pricing can increase peak demand by concentrating consumption in low-price hours, while peak demand charges offset these effects by internalizing capacity constraints, with responses driven by EV owners.\n \nTogether, the papers document how demand flexibility depends not only on price incentives, but also on automation, effort costs, and infrastructure, and how these factors interact with electricity market design in systems with growing renewable generation.

This session brings together three papers across different markets and policy settings that study how regulation and renewable support schemes affect behavior in electricity markets, and their effects on costs and market efficiency in power systems with high renewable penetration. The focus is on supplyside decisions – exit, generation, and curtailment.\n\nVan Steenberghe and Ovaere provide ex-post evidence that two-way Contracts for Difference for offshore wind in Great Britain distort behavior in day-ahead and balancing markets, leading to inefficient generation during negative-price hours and higher support costs. Fell, Holladay, and Kaffine document that wind generators respond to short-run price signals along an intensive operational margin, while solar generators do not. Kremer, Astier, and Lamy show empirically and theoretically that two-sided sliding feed-inpremium contracts can induce curtailment even when spot prices are positive, with equilibrium effects that may be larger than suggested by marginal analysis.

This session will examine how electricity pricing—its level, structure, timing, and institutional design—shapes consumer behavior and distributional outcomes. The papers combine evidence from multiple settings, including the United States, Europe, and Indonesia, and use a range of empirical approaches to study time-varying prices, long-run price responses, payment salience, and crisis-era market interventions. Together, they highlight that electricity prices are not merely signals for cost recovery, but powerful policy instruments that influence demand response, welfare, emissions, and equity. The session underscores the importance of careful price design in the context of decarbonization, rising electricity demand, and heightened concern about affordability and inequality. 

Achieving climate goals and advancing the clean energy transition critically relies on a few essential minerals, such as lithium, nickel, cobalt or rare earths elements (REEs), that are vital to the production of batteries, wind turbines, solar cells, and electric motors. A major concern, however, is that the supply of critical minerals is geographically concentrated in only a few countries, making access vulnerable to geopolitical tensions. In 2022, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused nickel prices to spike to unprecedented levels threatening to slow down the production of electric vehicles. More recently, China announced new restrictions on the export of rare earth elements as part of the broader US-China trade dispute, placing many clean technology industries that rely heavily on REEs at risk.\n \nThe Thematic Session on Critical Minerals for the Clean Energy Transition will bring together cutting-edge empirical and theoretical research examining the economic and policy implications of rapidly rising demand for critical minerals. The session will explore consequences for both clean energy industries and mineral-rich countries as global decarbonization efforts accelerate.

This session examines how natural resource extraction and energy transitions affect health, labor markets, and human capital in Sub-Saharan Africa. The papers highlight trade-offs between income gains, environmental externalities, and social outcomes. One study shows that artisanal gold mining increases infant mortality through water-borne pollution despite raising local incomes. Another finds that industrial mining affects nearby agriculture mainly through labor-market competition rather than short-run environmental damage. A third paper provides experimental evidence that subsidized clean cooking technologies generate substantial welfare and environmental gains while remaining economically viable. The final paper documents how mineral booms reduce adolescent girls’ schooling and increase underage employment. Together, the papers show how resource-driven development reshapes livelihoods across generations, sectors, and ecosystems, calling for integrated policy responses.

This session features both theoretical and empirical research on space economics. Rapid increases in private sector activities in Earth’s orbits are leading to congestion and creating pollution (satellite debris), raising costs for current and future space users. These challenges require policy design and implementation that tailor familiar tools such as pollution taxes and tradeable permits to the distinct peculiarities of the extraterrestrial environment. The Kaffine and Rao paper and the Rouillon paper focus upon the challenge of managing congestion in orbit. Kaffine and Rao present a state-of-the-science integrated assessment model, combining economic modeling with physical models of the space environment, and find that the observed distribution of satellite orbits is well-explained by profit-maximizing satellite operator behavior. Rouillon shows how monopolistic competition between satellite service providers in Earth orbit leads to suboptimal outcomes that may be corrected via two policy approaches. The Bongers and Torres paper and the Rieder and Wagner paper focus on the complementary topic of managing satellite debris generated in congested Earth orbits. Bongers and Torres present an empirical analysis that quantifies the social cost of orbital debris using projections from an integrated assessment model linking economic activity with the space environment. Rieder and Wagner propose a large regional satellite debris cap-and-trade program, arguing that in addition to having good economic theory properties, tradeable debris permits are more likely than Pigouvian taxes to be implemented within the existing regulatory and political environment. Taken together, the session’s papers comprise an introduction to the emerging research area of space economics, showcasing policy-relevant results of interest to all environmental and resource economists. 

This thematic session explores various dimensions of China’s green transition, focusing on the roles of governance, media, and infrastructure in shaping environmental outcomes. The four papers in this session examine distinct yet interconnected aspects of policy-driven environmental changes in China, shedding light on both intended and unintended consequences. 

To participate, please RSVP at datallah@povertyactionlab.org.\n\nAs Europe advances its net-zero ambitions, rigorous evidence is needed to inform effective and equitable decarbonisation policies. This informal convening, hosted by J-PAL Europe and Professor Peter Christensen, will bring together researchers to discuss the expansion of the J-PAL network focused on the economics of decarbonisation to the European context and explore opportunities for J-PAL to facilitate RCTs in partnership with European policymakers.

We welcome environmental economists conducting research on climate damages to participate in this session.