Call for Papers on “Accelerating Climate Action in Asia: Fiscal Policy Solutions”

SOAS to co-organise conference in Tokyo in July 2025.

Accelerating action on climate change in Asia and the Pacific while maintaining fiscal sustainability over the medium-to-long term presents a critical challenge for policymakers. There is an urgent need to invest in climate mitigation and adaptation strategies to address the escalating risks of global warming, extreme weather events, and environmental degradation. 

These measures require substantial financial resources to build resilient infrastructure, transition to low-carbon development pathways, and implement sustainable agricultural practices. Governments must balance these expenditures with the necessity of preserving fiscal health, avoiding excessive debt, and ensuring long-term economic stability.

Failure to act swiftly on climate change could lead to greater economic costs down the line, including damage to infrastructure, losses in productivity, and increased social welfare burdens. To resolve this tension, governments need to adopt integrated approaches, including leveraging private investment and implementing innovative financial instruments. These strategies can help governments tackle climate change while ensuring fiscal resilience and promoting sustainable development for future generations.

We are pleased to invite submissions for a forthcoming edited volume titled Accelerating Climate Action in Asia: Fiscal Policy Solutions. The edited book will contain a collection of chapters that aim to uncover fiscal policy mechanisms for policymakers in Asia and the Pacific that can effectively and efficiently contribute to addressing climate-related challenges. While papers can have a global dimension, a focus on Asia and the Pacific is desirable. Paper topics should include, but are not limited to:

• Mainstreaming climate risk in the management of public finances
• Fiscal policy design and climate-adjusted fiscal frameworks
• Fiscal implications of investment in renewable energy
• Green budgeting and climate change
• Impact of green transitions on government revenue and expenditure,
  including on the feasibility of alternative fiscal policy options
• Fiscal policy and green technology
• Strengthening fiscal capacity for accelerating the green transition
• Distributional effects and just transition
• Fiscal implications of climate adaptation policies
• Green investment and sustainability-linked bonds
• Leveraging fiscal policy to mobilize private capital at scale
• Carbon pricing and fiscal sustainability
• Optimal use of fiscal revenues from carbon taxes and emissions trading schemes
• Impact of green subsidies and green investment
• Climate risk and sovereign risk
• Modelling tools for informing projections on investment and expenditure requirements
• Green/sustainable public procurement

Selected papers will be presented at an in-person conference to be held at the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) in Tokyo, Japan, on 9–10 July 2025. For each paper, the organizers will provide travel and accommodation support for one author who is a citizen of an ADB member economy.

The deadline for the submission of the full manuscript of 5,000–7,000 words (including an abstract of around 200 words and references) via this link is 30 April 2025. Please include a description of the paper’s research background, results, and conclusions, as well as the name, affiliation, position, and email of each author. The corresponding author should be clearly marked on the submission. The abstract should briefly state the purpose of the research, principal results, and primary conclusion.

Key Dates

Selection Criteria

Paper submissions must be original and not been previously published in a book or journal. Submitted papers should also not infringe on any copyright, privacy rights, or legal rights of any third party. Submissions will be judged based on criteria such as:

• Originality
• Analytical rigor
• Policy relevance in the Asian context
• Readability/coherence

Organizing Committee

• Dr John Beirne (Asian Development Bank)
• Dr Donghyun Park (Asian Development Bank)
• Dr Arief Ramayandi (ADBI)
• Prof Ulrich Volz (SOAS University of London)

Contact

All inquiries may be directed to: 

• ADB Secretariat at secretariat06@events.adb.org 
• Arief Ramayandi, Senior Research Fellow, ADBI at aramayandi@adbi.org

Header Image Credit: Weichao Deng via Unsplash.