30 June 2026 | Carcavelos, Portugal
PEP’s Executive Director called for fair carbon pricing that reflects countries' differing development priorities and institutional realities at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists.
From left: Dr. Jacopo Cammeo (Co-chair), Prof. Carolyn Fischer, Prof. Jane Mariara, Prof. Christopher Costello, Prof. Toshi H. Arimura, Prof. Yong Sung Cho, and Prof. Simone Borghesi (Chair) during a panel discussion at the World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE) in Carcavelos, Portugal.
A "globally uniform" carbon price is not necessarily a "globally fair" one. That was the challenge PEP Executive Director Prof. Jane Mariara put to a room of leading environmental economists on 30 June as the only panellist bringing a Global South perspective to the discussion.
Speaking on a panel on global carbon pricing at the 7th World Congress of Environmental and Resource Economists (WCERE 2026), Prof. Mariara argued that climate policies must recognise countries' different development priorities and institutional realities. Many countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, she noted, face the dual challenge of responding to climate change while simultaneously pursuing energy access, food security, poverty reduction, and structural transformation.
She emphasised that building durable climate policy requires more than technically elegant solutions. It requires governance arrangements that recognise differing national circumstances and development priorities and a shift from policy inheritance to policy co-design so that countries in the Global South are not merely implementing climate policies designed elsewhere but actively helping to shape them.
Reflecting on the discussion, Prof. Mariara said:
"For me, one of the most valuable aspects of WCERE 2026 was the opportunity to highlight the role of locally led research in shaping global climate policy. Building fair and durable climate solutions requires more than participation from the Global South—it requires genuine leadership, analytical capacity, and evidence generated by researchers working within the contexts they seek to transform.
The panel, titled "Global carbon pricing: the feasibility of a utopian idea", focused on one of the defining challenges in climate policy: how to design carbon pricing systems that are economically efficient while also being politically feasible, equitable, and supportive of sustainable development. It was part of the Congress's Science–Policy–Business track, designed to bridge research with policy design and implementation. The Congress also reflected the growing contribution of researchers from the Global South to environmental economics debates, underscoring the value of more inclusive and representative research communities. It was well attended and very interactive despite the large number of concurrent sessions taking place across the programme.
Prof. Simone Borghesi chaired the session, co-chaired by Dr. Jacopo Cammeo. Prof. Mariara was joined on the panel by Prof. Toshi H. Arimura, Prof. Carolyn Fischer, Prof. Christopher Costello, and Prof. Yong Sung Cho.
WCERE 2026 ran from 29 June to 3 July in Carcavelos, Portugal. The Congress brought together more than 1,000 researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working on the world's biggest environmental challenges—climate change, natural resources, and sustainable development—to present frontier research and discuss policy. As governments increasingly rely on environmental economists to design climate policies that are both effective and politically feasible, Congress provides an important platform for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to exchange evidence and ideas.
