As Vietnam pursues a path of sustainable growth, inland waterway transport and coastal shipping offer viable alternatives to the traditional road sector, particularly when environmental costs are taken into consideration. This report profiles Vietnam s waterborne transport sector and proposes interventions to improve its performance.

Technological revolutions have increased the world’s wealth unevenly and in ways that have accelerated climate change. This report argues that achieving The Paris Agreement’s objectives would require a massive transfer of existing and commercially proven low-carbon technologies (LCT) from high-income to developing countries where the bulk of future emissions is expected to occur. This mass deployment is not only a necessity but also an opportunity: Policies to deploy LCT can help countries achieve economic and other development objectives, like improving human health, in addition to reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs). Additionally, LCT deployment offers an opportunity for countries with sufficient capabilities to benefit from participation in global value chains and produce and export LCTs. Finally, the report calls for a greater international involvement in supporting the poorest countries, which have the least access to LCT and finance and the most underdeveloped physical, technological, and institutional capabilities that are essential to benefit from technology.

Low carbon technology transfer to developing countries has been both a lynchpin of, and a key stumbling block to a global deal on climate change. This book brings together for the first time in one place the work of some of the world's leading contemporary researchers in this field. It provides a practical, empirically grounded guide for policy makers and practitioners, while at the same time making new theoretical advances in combining insights from the literature on technology transfer and the literature on low carbon innovation. The book begins by summarizing the nature of low carbon technology transfer and its contemporary relevance in the context of climate change, before introducing a new theoretical framework through which effective policy mechanisms can be analyzed. The north-south, developed-developing country differences and synergies are then introduced together with the relevant international policy context. Uniquely, the book also introduces questions around the extent to which current approaches to technology transfer under the international policy regime might be considered to be 'pro-poor'. Throughout, the book draws on cutting edge empirical work to illustrate the insights it affords. The book concludes by setting out constructive ways forward towards delivering on existing international commitments in this area, including practical tools for decision makers.

Like many of its Southeast Asian neighbors, Vietnam faces the twin challenges of sustaining economic growth and protecting the environment. On the one hand, the impressive poverty reduction and growth performance attained over the past 25 years is now challenged by slower global and domestic growth, more intense international competition for foreign direct investment, and the need to drive domestic productivity improvements. On the other, Vietnams vast natural resourcesas represented by two major river deltas, a long coast line, and a multitude of rivers and canalsand the large portion of its population leaving in proximity to bodies of water or dependent upon water- and weather-driven sectors of the economy, such as rice production and aquaculture, demand that decisive steps be taken to reduce the carbon intensity of the Vietnamese economy. This report argues that promoting the use of waterborne transport in Vietnams freight logistics can be an effective way of both facilitating economic growth and reducing the emission of greenhouse gases and local pollutants. In particular, it shows that investments in capacity expansion and better maintenance provision at the countrys main navigable waterways and coastal shipping routes can result in logistics cost savings, which promote trade and drive growth. But they would also result in meaningfully lower emissions in a sector that remains less green than it could be, on account of the use of relatively small and inefficient vessels. The report offers three main contributions. First, by profiling Vietnams inland waterway sector it sheds light on a critical component of the economy that has nevertheless remained opaque. Second, it proposes and quantitatively assesses well-defined public- and public-private investment opportunities in waterborne transport that can improve sector performance. And third, it explicitly takes into account the value of changes in local pollutant and greenhouse gas emissions in a preliminary economic appraisal of the interventions proposed. As the need to strengthen Vietnams trade competitiveness intensifies, the inland waterway and coastal shipping sectors, often overlooked, can be part of the reform and modernization agenda. This report intends to contribute to that important conversation.

Transport provides access to public services for the poor, opens up trade opportunities, and maximizes the benefits of urbanization: the mobility of people and goods drives development. So how can we protect the role of transport in times of scarcer fuels, costly and harmful carbon emissions, and the rising threat of extreme weather events? This is the central question that this book seeks to answer. Turning the Right Corner: Ensuring Development through a Low-Carbon Transport Sector finds that adopting new vehicle technologies and alternative fuels will not be enough to curb greenhouse gas emissions from transport: new patterns of mobility will also be needed. In developing countries where past infrastructure investments have not yet locked in particular transport modes, there is an opportunity to contain emissions by harnessing low-emission modes of transport. The book argues that the transition to low-carbon mobility is not only urgently needed if economies are to avoid becoming locked into high-carbon growth, but is also affordable. It outlines how countries can combine policies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions with broader sector reforms that generate new fiscal resources to finance the transition in addition to carbon financing and international assistance. Turning the Right Corner: Ensuring Development through a Low-Carbon Transport Sector will be of interest to policy makers, academics, and development practitioners with an interest in transport. It will help decision makers better understand how to contain the transport sector's contribution to climate change and protect transport infrastructure and services from severe weather events.

Global value chains (GVCs) powered the surge of international trade after 1990 and now account for almost half of all trade. This shift enabled an unprecedented economic convergence: poor countries grew rapidly and began to catch up with richer countries. Since the 2008 global financial crisis, however, the growth of trade has been sluggish and the expansion of GVCs has stalled. Meanwhile, serious threats have emerged to the model of trade-led growth. New technologies could draw production closer to the consumer and reduce the demand for labor. And trade conflicts among large countries could lead to a retrenchment or a segmentation of GVCs. World Development Report 2020: Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains examines whether there is still a path to development through GVCs and trade. It concludes that technological change is, at this stage, more a boon than a curse. GVCs can continue to boost growth, create better jobs, and reduce poverty provided that developing countries implement deeper reforms to promote GVC participation; industrial countries pursue open, predictable policies; and all countries revive multilateral cooperation.

Addressing the poverty and distributional impacts of carbon pricing reforms is critical for the success of ambitious actions in the fight against climate change. This paper uses a simple framework to systematically review the channels through which carbon pricing can potentially affect poverty and inequality. It finds that the channels differ in important ways along several dimensions. The paper also identifies several key gaps in the current literature and discusses some considerations on how policy designs could take into account the attributes of the channels in mitigating the impacts of carbon pricing reforms on households.