Co-benefits: taking a multidisciplinary approach

Most environmental policies are meant to achieve a single goal such as reducing pollution, preserving ecosystems or mitigating climate change. Yet environmental issues are frequently interlinked and approaches that exploit these linkages can deliver more than one desirable outcome. The collection of benefits accruing to actions linking climate change and other development priorities (e.g., reducing local pollution) are known as "co-benefits". Over the past two decades, a growing number of studies have demonstrated that an integrated or co-benefits approach could prove more cost effective than managing climate and development issues in isolation, but policies reflecting this integration have tended to lag behind research. This article argues that a multidisciplinary approach will be needed to bring policies in line with research on co-benefits.