Climate and Nature Economic Policy Scenarios: Reflections from the Exeter Climate Forum

During the 2026 Exeter Climate Forum, held on the University of Exeter’s Streatham Campus from 29 June, Jean-François Mercure and Hector Pollitt launched their new book, Rethinking Climate Policy: Innovation and the Economics of Resource Creation (Cambridge University Press).

Climate and Nature Economic Policy Scenarios: Reflections from the Exeter Climate Forum

The Exeter Climate Forum 2026 hosted a series of discussions with the Climate and Nature Economic Policy Scenarios (CNEPS) initiative — a collaboration convened by the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and the University of Exeter. CNEPS aims to help ministries of finance and public development banks build scenario tools designed for their own decisions, as climate and nature move to the centre of macroeconomic and fiscal policy.

New partnership with Agence Française de Développement

The University of Exeter is to partner with France’s international development agency on a new programme supporting countries in the Global South with their economic policy in the face of climate change.

The University will work with Agence Française de Développement (AFD) and finance ministries around the world to strengthen the macroeconomic analytical tools available to governments.

Governing Under Radical Uncertainty: Why Fiscal Authorities Need Climate and Nature Scenarios December 10, 2025

How should Ministries of Finance govern in an economy undergoing structural transformation, technological disruption, escalating climate impacts and geopolitical fragmentation?

In this article, we examine one of the core economic issues of the 21st century, discussed at a recent workshop with the OECD and AFD, in collaboration with NGFS, CFMCA and FiCS.

Blog: Generating Useful Climate Scenarios For Financial Risk Assessment

Scenarios have been identified as useful for more effectively understanding, identifying and discussing climate-related risks. However, much work remains, and while the importance of using scenarios has been emphasised  and entered the regulatory space, there has been little discussion regarding the content of scenarios. What storylines are useful to look at? Obviously, there is both the potential to help raise awareness of risks, as well as downplay the risks, depending on what we choose to explore in scenarios.

This is Part 2 in a series, following the previous blog post on climate risk washing. In short, we say that scenarios should focus on quantified heavy-tailed risks which often follow ‘earthquake laws’ and should take consideration of aftershocks as disasters almost always arise as cascades.

Blog: The Mid-Transition and Fossil Related Conflict

Will decarbonisation likely to be orderly or disorderly, when considering fossil fuel geopolitics? Will it cause intensified fossil-related conflict? How can countries game around stranded fossil fuel assets?

Many researchers have studied decarbonisation scenarios, including us, portraying peaceful storylines of fossil decline. But we may all have underestimated the incentives that are created for strategic behaviour that make the global fossil economy become unstable, highly volatile and conflict-ridden.

Blog: Economic transformation and the risks of loss of purpose

Could badly designed transitions be damaging people’s lives with industrial decline, left behind communities, loss of hope, meaning and purpose? Are we just a consumption society in the ‘West’? In other words, is maintaining consumption the only thing that matters?

Blog: The Profitable Market for Climate Risk-Washing

Climate change is killing people now, yet financial risk models still treat it as a problem for decades away. We explore who generates climate-risk evidence, for whom, and under whose incentives, and why for-profit data providers may be unable to resist selling risk-washing as a service.