IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/erg/wpaper/588.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Climate Change Policy in the MENA Region: Prospects, Challenges, and the Implication of Market Instruments

Author

Listed:
  • Mustafa Hussein Babiker

    (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

  • Mohammed A. Fehaid

Abstract

Climate change is one of the principal challenges facing the world today. Given its harsh climate and fragile ecosystems, the MENA region is vulnerable to the physical impacts of climate change, yet, given its high dependency on hydrocarbon resources, the MENA region is also vulnerable to the impacts of climate change response measures. This paper addresses four crucial aspects in relation to climate change policy and its impacts in the MENA region. These are the rising energy/carbon intensities in the region, the impacts of climate change response measures, the mitigation potentials in the region, and the suitability of market based instrument to harness these potentials. The analysis made use of the Marginal Abatement Cost (MAC) curves and econometric techniques to assess the Green House Gas emissions (GHG) mitigation potentials in MENA and a Computable General Equilibrium (CGE) modeling to investigate the impacts of response measures and to explore the suitability of market-based instruments to harness mitigation potentials in the region. The main policy insights to be drawn from the analysis include the role of incentives to promote energy efficiency and reduce carbon emissions in the region, the potential gains from actively participating in the international carbon markets through the use of Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), the contribution of climate policy to air quality, and the role of green tax reforms and other sweeteners to improve the welfare economics of pursuing domestic carbon policies in the region.

Suggested Citation

  • Mustafa Hussein Babiker & Mohammed A. Fehaid, 2011. "Climate Change Policy in the MENA Region: Prospects, Challenges, and the Implication of Market Instruments," Working Papers 588, Economic Research Forum, revised 05 Jan 2011.
    • Handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:588
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://erf.org.eg/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/588.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://bit.ly/2mEfvAv
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Babiker, Mustafa & Reilly, John M. & Jacoby, Henry D., 2000. "The Kyoto Protocol and developing countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(8), pages 525-536, July.
    2. Babiker, Mustafa H. & Metcalf, Gilbert E. & Reilly, John, 2003. "Tax distortions and global climate policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 269-287, September.
    3. Sue Wing, Ian, 2008. "Explaining the declining energy intensity of the U.S. economy," Resource and Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 21-49, January.
    4. Rutherford, Thomas F., 1995. "Extension of GAMS for complementarity problems arising in applied economic analysis," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 19(8), pages 1299-1324, November.
    5. Hang, Leiming & Tu, Meizeng, 2007. "The impacts of energy prices on energy intensity: Evidence from China," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(5), pages 2978-2988, May.
    6. A. Bovenberg, 1999. "Green Tax Reforms and the Double Dividend: an Updated Reader's Guide," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 6(3), pages 421-443, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Goel, Rajeev K. & Herrala, Risto & Mazhar, Ummad, 2013. "Institutional quality and environmental pollution: MENA countries versus the rest of the world," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 508-521.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mustafa H. Babiker & Thomas F. Rutherford, 2005. "The Economic Effects of Border Measures in Subglobal Climate Agreements," The Energy Journal, , vol. 26(4), pages 99-126, October.
    2. Babiker, Mustafa H. & Metcalf, Gilbert E. & Reilly, John, 2003. "Tax distortions and global climate policy," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 269-287, September.
    3. Hertel, Thomas, 2013. "Global Applied General Equilibrium Analysis Using the Global Trade Analysis Project Framework," Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, in: Peter B. Dixon & Dale Jorgenson (ed.), Handbook of Computable General Equilibrium Modeling, edition 1, volume 1, chapter 0, pages 815-876, Elsevier.
    4. Boeters, Stefan, 2014. "Optimally differentiated carbon prices for unilateral climate policy," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 304-312.
    5. Yu-Bong Lai, 2009. "Is a Double Dividend Better than a Single Dividend?," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 165(2), pages 342-363, June.
    6. Florian Landis, 2019. "Cost distribution and equity of climate policy in Switzerland," Swiss Journal of Economics and Statistics, Springer;Swiss Society of Economics and Statistics, vol. 155(1), pages 1-28, December.
    7. Chen, Dengke & Chen, Shiyi & Jin, Hao & Lu, Yulin, 2020. "The impact of energy regulation on energy intensity and energy structure: Firm-level evidence from China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 59(C).
    8. Mireille Chiroleu-Assouline & Mouez Fodha, 2011. "Verdissement de la fiscalité. À qui profite le double dividende ?," Revue de l'OFCE, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 0(1), pages 409-431.
    9. Christoph Bohringer, Andreas Loschel and Thomas F. Rutherford, 2006. "Efficiency Gains from "What"-Flexibility in Climate Policy An Integrated CGE Assessment," The Energy Journal, International Association for Energy Economics, vol. 0(Special I), pages 405-424.
    10. Babiker, Mustafa H., 2005. "Climate change policy, market structure, and carbon leakage," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(2), pages 421-445, March.
    11. Löschel, Andreas & Lange, Andreas & Hoffmann, Tim & Böhringer, Christoph & Moslener, Ulf, 2004. "Assessing Emission Allocation in Europe: An Interactive Simulation Approach," ZEW Discussion Papers 04-40, ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research.
    12. Saveyn, Bert & Van Regemorter, Denise & Ciscar, Juan Carlos, 2011. "Economic analysis of the climate pledges of the Copenhagen Accord for the EU and other major countries," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 33(S1), pages 34-40.
    13. Favourate Y. Mpofu, 2022. "Green Taxes in Africa: Opportunities and Challenges for Environmental Protection, Sustainability, and the Attainment of Sustainable Development Goals," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(16), pages 1-26, August.
    14. Lu, M. & Pollitt, M. G., 2025. "Will High Carbon Prices Reduce Fossil Fuel Use in China? Evidence from Price Elasticity Estimates using Firm Data," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 2527, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    15. Babiker, Mustafa & Gurgel, Angelo & Paltsev, Sergey & Reilly, John, 2009. "Forward-looking versus recursive-dynamic modeling in climate policy analysis: A comparison," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 26(6), pages 1341-1354, November.
    16. Böhringer, Christoph & Fischer, Carolyn, 2023. "Tax, kill or bill: An analysis of unilateral CO2 price floor options in multilateral emissions trading systems," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 119(C).
    17. Antonietti, Roberto & Fontini, Fulvio, 2019. "Does energy price affect energy efficiency? Cross-country panel evidence," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 896-906.
    18. Rausch, Sebastian, 2013. "Fiscal consolidation and climate policy: An overlapping generations perspective," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 40(S1), pages 134-148.
    19. Bruno Lanz & Sebastian Rausch, 2013. "Cap-and-Trade Climate Policy, Free Allowances, and Price-Regulated Firms," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 13/178, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.
    20. Becker, Jonathon & Schreiber, Andrew & McFarland, James, 2024. "The Welfare Consequences of Government Budget Closure Assumptions Under New Environmental Policies," National Center for Environmental Economics-NCEE Working Papers 348903, United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:erg:wpaper:588. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sherine Ghoneim (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/erfaceg.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.