A Live Talk on greening the post-COVID-19 recovery measures in the Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) region took place virtually on 25 June 2021. 

 

Background

The economic recovery from the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic presents opportunities to build back greener. According to new OECD data, OECD countries and key partner economies have allocated USD 336 billion to environmentally positive measures within their COVID-19 economic recovery packages. These measures help to pave the way for arecovery that not only provides income and jobs, but also has broader well-being goals at its core, integrates strong climate and biodiversity action, and builds economic, social and ecosystem resilience.

As in many countries, the economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (EECCA) have been negatively affected by the global COVID-19 pandemic. Their governments responded by addressing the health impacts and providing relief to affected businesses and workers.

In the short term, policy measures taken to slow down the spread of the virus have had both negative and positive impacts on the environment in the EECCA region. With regards to positive effects, countries have experienced short-term improvements in air quality due to limited mobility of people and reduced activity of enterprises, leading also to reduced emissions. However, these improvements are only temporary and much more needs to be done to ensure that recovery plans can advance the transition to a greener, climate-resilient and low-carbon economy.

 

Objectives of the Live Talk

The meeting revolved around several questions:

• Have governments in the EECCA region made efforts to green their economic recovery?
• Can more be done in the context of budget constraints, impacts of the economic downturn on businesses or a relatively high share of the energy intensive sectors in the economies of the region?
• What are the co-benefits and trade-offs of greening post-COVID-19 economic recovery measures?

The discussion will be based on the OECD policy brief “COVID-19 and Greening the Economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia”.

 

Participants 

• government officials from the Ministries of Environment and Economy; 
• banking sector;
• OECD;

meeting documents

• Agenda
• Summary record

Presentation slides

• Environmental aspects of the policy responses to the COVID-19 outbreak (Isabella Neuweg & Douglas Herrick, OECD)
• How green is the recovery? Insights from the OECD green recovery database (Andrew Prag, OECD)

Related documents

• OECD Policy Paper: COVID-19 and greening the economies of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia (English | Russian).