Box 5.2: Green recover y: Commitments and actions misaligned?

and social change,69 net zero transitions are value-laden and depend on societal preferences.70 Social change manifests in individual-level social behaviours, practices (e.g. ever yday eating or mobility), and broader social relations and structures.71 The IEA, for example, has proposed changes in urban areas, such as phasing out internal combustion engine cars and promoting ridesharing for all urban car trips.72

However, the contributions of behavioural change to net zero are limited. Behavioural change in urban areas (e.g. replacing car trips with walking, cycling or public transport, or foregoing long-haul flights) could provide around 4 per cent of cumulative global emissions reductions.73 Alternatively, urban communities can play an active role in transition processes e.g. through spawning urban innovation, participating in political coalitions for change or redefining how they engage with infrastructure and markets.74 Such a transition would require moving away from conceptualizing urban dwellers as consumers who influence the transition via consumer choices and instead recognize people as active makers of their urban environments.

Net zero transitions also involve a broader change in the cultural, legal and institutional frameworks that guide the production and use of technology, the ever yday practices of organizations and consumers, and design choices for products and infrastructures.75 In addition, social movements may foster innovation and transitions towards net zero.76

Market-based incentives and voluntar y agreements are insufficient to bring about this kind of social change in urban areas.77 Instead, local governments should implement

Box 5.2: Green recovery: Commitments and actions misaligned?

Evidence suggests that amidst the call for greener urban futures, global green spending is so far incommensurate with the scale of ongoing environmental crises. A recent study by UNEP of the 50 largest national economies found that only US$368 billion of US$14.6 trillion COVID-induced spending—or just 2.5 per cent of total spending (both rescue and recovery)—in 2020 was green while only 18 per cent of recovery spending was considered so.

Moreover, reports also show that 15 major producer countries continue to provide significant policy support for fossil fuel production; their production plans and projections would lead to about 240 per cent more coal, 57 per cent more oil, and 71 per cent more gas in 2030 than would be consistent with limiting global warming to 1.5°C.

Recovery spending over the course of the pandemic with total green spending, 2020

Source : UNEP, 2021c; SEI et al, 2021.