Climate Transition Economics

Deputy Head of Unit, DG Agri G1- Global issues, WTO and relations with ACP in the European Commission

Stefan Tangermann was until end-2008 Director for Trade and Agriculture at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Paris. He is now professor emeritus at the Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development, University of Göttingen, Germany.

Before joining the OECD in 2002, Mr Tangermann was a professor of economics and agricultural economics at the universities of Frankfurt/Main and Göttingen. His academic work has focused, among other topics, on the need and options for reforming agricultural policies in OECD countries, on the analysis of global markets for food and agricultural products, and on strengthening the rules for agricultural trade, with a particular emphasis on the WTO.

Mr Tangermann is a Member of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities and was its President from 2012 to 2016. For a long time he was a member of the Scientific Advisory Council of Germany’s Federal Ministry of Agriculture, and he also served as a member of Germany’s Science Council. From 2001 to 2025 he was a member of the Steering Committee of the High Level Panel of Experts of the United Nations Committee on World Food Security. Mr. Tangermann has advised several governments, including those of the USA and China, the European Commission and various international organisations.

Mr Tangermann was awarded the Order of Merit, First Class, by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. He is a Fellow of the European Association of Agricultural Economists and of the German Agricultural Economics Association.

Director ‘Sustainability’, European Commission, DG AGRI , Management of EU policy to enhance economic, environmental and social sustainability of EU agriculture and forestry.

PhDManaging Director at French National Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment (INRAE)

Bjarne Steffen is an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and heads its Climate Finance and Policy Group. His research concerns public policy related to the low-carbon transition in the energy and financial sectors, drawing on concepts from energy economics, financial economics, and innovation studies. He is a member of international advisory bodies, such as the World Economic Forum’s Taskforce on Mobilizing Investment for Clean Energy in Emerging Economies, and the OECD/UNEP Green Finance Platform’s Sustainable Finance Effectiveness Working Group, and an external faculty at the MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research.

Lena Klaaßen is a PhD candidate at the Climate Finance and Policy Group at ETH Zurich with a background in finance and power engineering. She conducts research on the role of the financial sector in accelerating investment in low-carbon technologies. In this context, her focus is on future investments needs in Europe’s infrastructure to get on a Paris-compatible pathway and whether current policies are fitted to induce required changes. Beyond that, she explores how and why investment needs and types vary across low-carbon technologies. Before joining the Climate Finance and Policy Group, she researched on carbon accounting in the corporate and cryptocurrency space.

Jacopo Cammeo is a Research Associate at the Climate Area of the Florence School of Regulation, European University Institute since 2023.

Previously, he was a research assistant at the Department of Business and Law of the University of Siena, a partner of the “OpenInnoTrain” European consortium, and a post-doctoral researcher at the Department of Economics of the University of Florence to work on the Horizon Europe project SPES (Sustainability, Performances, Evidence and Scenarios).

He graduated in Economics from the University of Florence (BSc, MSc) and in Sustainable Development and Environmental Economics from the University of St Andrews (MSc). He holds a PhD in Business Administration and Management from the University of Pisa.

His research areas include climate policy, sustainability, clusters, and innovation ecosystems.

He actively participated in academic conferences and scientific meetings organised by several international institutions, among them the Global Research Council – European Region, the European Commission, the International Union of Railways, and the World Council of Environmental and Resource Economists. He is a member of EAERE (European Association of Environmental and Resource Economists).

Matteo Mazzarano has been a research fellow at EUI since 2023 and Assistant professor at University of Siena since 2022, where he is docent of Economic Policy. He is a member of the IAERE (Italian Association of Environmental and Resource Economists) and the EAERE (European Association of Environmental and Resource Economics). Since July 2023, he has been part of the LIFE Collaborative Observatory for ASsessment of the EU ETS (COASE) project.

Departing from a Bachelor’s degree in political science at Roma III University in 2015, he achieved later the master’s in Resource Economics and Sustainable Development at Bologna University in 2017. His doctoral studies were completed at the University of Ferrara in 2021 with a thesis on the economics and justice of circularity, mining and secondary material, when he was awarded the Doctor Europeus prize.

From 2020 to 2022, he pursued a postdoc 2020-2022 at the Catholic University of Milan. The research themes focused on applying text analytical tools in the context of Climate Transition Risk, Climate Finance Climate to quantify transition risk in mandatory non-financial statements. He has been affiliated with the Foundation Eny Enrico Mattei (FEEM) until 2021. Since 2022, he has been affiliated with the Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (also known as CMCC). Here, he investigates the economic and social risks due to Climate Change in local economies.

He published in academic journals such as Ecological Economics, Review of Financial Analysis, Regional Studies, Waste Management and Resources Economics and reviewer in Economia Politica, Frontiers in Climate, Cleaner Production, Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Business Strategy and the Environment.

His main research themes are the fiscal implication of climate policies and climate risks, transition risk in financial markets, the economics and justice of circularity, and secondary materials applying both theoretical and empirical methods.

Fabio Santeramo, Marie Curie Fellow at the Global Governance Programme of the Schuman Centre, presents his future research plans on the relationship between climate change, trade and agriculture.

The agri-food sector is both highly impacted by climate change and is one of the main contributors to the global emissions, with more than 13 billion metric tons of CO2 equivalent. A growing world population and changes in diet are going to raise the demand for food and for livestock feed and therefore increase the emissions from agriculture. On the other hand, climate change may have a substantial impact on the use of land and other inputs, on the productivity and ultimately on the global agri-food production.

Changes in climate are already altering the use of land and the productivity in developed and developing countries, with consequences that are reflected on emissions, use of resources and global availability of food. The major consequences are evident at local level and therefore influence the terms of trade dynamics, and in turn the debate on trade policies.

After having recognised the role of trade in allowing adaptation to climate change, scientists are debating on the role of trade policies. Recent papers have pointed at the losses (in terms of lack of adaptation) implied by existing trade barriers. Some scholars have also argued that trade policies may be effective tools to incentivise the relocation of the agri-food production in areas rewarded by the global warming. Moreover, the policy interventions may prove effective in discouraging the production in least (environmentally) efficient areas in order to reduce the emissions and lowering the pressure of the sector on the environment.

Against this background, it is remarkable to note that economics has failed to find a global solution. Scholars have stressed on the need to establish a cross-disciplines approach, deriving knowledge from several fields such as agricultural and environmental economics, international economics, international relations, and political science. A multidisciplinary approach is necessary to produce ground-breaking, scientifically rigorous evidence to guide stakeholders in their decisions and negotiations. Only by evaluating different potential solutions and designing enforcing mechanisms to achieve effective international cooperation, it will be possible to establish a new trade regime, capable of ensuring resilience, efficiency and equity to the global agri-food sector.