Net Zero+: Climate and Economic Resilience in a Changing World

The OECD’s Horizontal Project on Climate and Economic Resilience is using the multidisciplinary reach of the OECD to support governments in driving the swift transformational change needed to tackle climate change.

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Upcoming workshop

This session will bring together some of the leading experts working to define and identify positive tipping points to discuss progress being made and the implications this has for policy making.

About the project

Net Zero+ provides analysis and insights for governments looking at the whole climate picture: driving a rapid and resilient transition to net-zero while building resilience to physical climate impacts.

Improving economic resilience has become a key priority for governments as they have grappled with recent turbulent events, such as Covid-19 and the far-reaching effects of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.

At the same time, the climate crisis is becoming ever more urgent. Unchecked, climate change will pose a significant and escalating threat to global economic and social stability, in particular if irreversible “tipping points” are triggered.

Key themes include:

Making the net-zero transition not only fast but also resilient and durable, including by “future proofing” transition strategies against diverse potential disruptions.
Modelling the macroeconomic effects of net-zero strategies and implications for public finance.
Putting people at the centre of the transition, addressing the many social implications of a rapid transition towards net-zero emissions.
Understanding climate-system tipping points and their implications for near-term policy.
Building systemic resilience to climate impacts and adapting to climate change.

The project: Four modules

This module focuses on framing the increasingly urgent climate crisis in the context of the current international economic and social circumstances. It includes better characterising and integrating the non-linear impacts of climate change, such as climate tipping points, into policy planning, as well as focusing on systems approaches to designing policies.

This module focuses on the policies needed to accelerate the transition towards net-zero emissions, while making sure the transition is itself resilient to changing economic, social, technological and environmental conditions. This includes new modelling and analysis that will examine the implications of macroeconomic, fiscal and budgetary policies for accelerating progress towards net-zero.

This module focuses on opportunities to build systemic resilience to the impacts of climate change. It builds on work on understanding the risk of losses and damages from climate change and contributes new analysis on developing strategies to build climate resilience in key systems such as food production, cities and in the financial system.

The International Programme for Action on Climate (IPAC) is a major OECD initiative aiming to deliver the tools and information needed to monitor and support country-specific actions towards net-zero emissions and climate resilience. In its initial phase, IPAC is embodied within the horizontal project and provides an important, data-driven tracking component, complementing the rest of the project’s analysis.

Net Zero+ publications and papers

Find OECD reports, working papers and policy briefs on climate change produced under the Net Zero+ project.

Find out more

12 steps for governments to build climate and economic resilience...

1. Limit overshoot beyond 1.5°C

Faced with threat of climate tipping points, do everything possible to limit overshoot beyond 1.5°C – faster reductions and shape of the pathway matters.

2. Ensure spending for crisis relief

Ensure spending for crisis relief and economic stimulus is aligned with climate goals and sufficiently targeted.

3. Future-proof climate strategies

Make climate strategies as “future-proofed” as possible, stress-testing using strategic foresight techniques and anticipating bottlenecks to the transition: e.g., on public finance, cost-of-capital, energy and materials supply, skills, innovation.

4. Focus on entire systems

Focus policy making on the systems level, rather than considering individual components or outcomes, to accelerate transition and improve systemic resilience.

5. Tailor policies depending on the context

Get the climate policy basics right, including a mix of price-based and other instruments tailored to regional, national and local contexts and greening of public governance.

6. Mainstream climate change adaptation

Mainstream climate change adaptation throughout national policy processes and exploit synergies between interlinked mitigation and adaptation policy objectives, while minimising trade-offs.

7. Address public finance implications

Address public finance implications of transition through careful fiscal planning, assessing direct and indirect effects of policies and transition to net-zero aligned tax instruments.

8. Accelerate innovation

Accelerate innovation through a mission-oriented, outcome-based approach to drive the whole innovation cycle. Target support measures for earlystage innovation and R&D.

9. Assess impacts and communicate with the public

Carefully assess direct and indirect distributional impacts of climate policy; consider multiple options for revenue recycling and employ effective, accurate, clear, and easily accessible communication with the public about how policies work.

10. Identify skills gaps

Support new employment patterns by ensuring reasonable labour market flexibility and mobility while promoting job quality and protecting workers; identify skills needs and bottlenecks and prioritise up- or re-skilling.

11. Align mitigation and adaptation goals

Better align financial system policies with both climate mitigation and adaptation goals, including improved market practices, alignment of core investment policies, use of responsible business conduct tools, and harnessing the double role of the insurance sector as both investor and insurance provider.

12. Align development and climate objectives

Embed a global approach that recognises the interlinkages between climate and development transitions, drawing on all levers of development co-operation support to converge on a ‘common approach’ that aligns development and climate objectives.

Watch our video on 12 steps for governments to accelerate climate action

Read the Net Zero+ Report and Policy Highlights

The key findings of the Net Zero+ report have been distilled into a short summary, which highlights key messages and summarises relevant findings from each of the reports three substantive parts. This overview draws on the full breadth of the OECD’s multidisciplinary expertise, and synthesises policy recommendations for accelerating resilient action on climate change, including 12 steps that governments can take to build climate and economic resilience.

Read the report

Governance and cross-cutting expertise

OECD country governments are guiding the project via a leadership group comprised of senior officials from across the OECD’s wide range of policy committees.

Combined with the multidisciplinary policy expertise housed across the organisation, this maximises the unique value of OECD’s all-of-government reach.

The project also benefits from a dedicated high-level External Advisory panel made up of high-profile international leaders.