Fiscal implications – inclusive growth and climate change resilience: a scoping study of existing policy in selected ASEAN countries

Inclusive growth and climate change resilience have been enthusiastically debated issues at the global and local levels even before the COVID-19 pandemic. It has been argued that they have increasingly threatened to destabilise the economy while interfering with the fiscal goals of stability, full employment, sustainable growth and development for shared prosperity and welfare. Governments, institutions and the private sector now acknowledge the importance and urgency for coordinated action toward inclusive and sustainable outcomes and government actions. However, tweaking existing policies by adding discretionary programs within the “one size fits it all” paradigm could not address these issues effectively. It has been argued that pro-equity policies can reduce inequality and pro-green policies can strengthen climate change resilience and thus achieve sustainable outcomes under an integrated fiscal policy. This study reviews the existing literature in this field by employing a structured qualitative methodology to scope, contextualise and map the literature in this field. The paper focuses on inclusive and sustainable fiscal policy, which, through coordination and integration, achieves economic stability, inclusive growth, and sustainable development outcomes concurrently, i.e. the challenge of internalising economic activity’s social costs to render a net social surplus and neutralise environmental impact. This study evaluates the extent of the existing programs and policies by adopting a mixed-method qualitative analysis methodology that incorporates a scoping review and document analysis. It performs a structured analysis to uncover the effective policy variables, drivers and impediments. The document analysis method complements the scoping review to extract the thematic meaning, article design and metadata of the analysed documents in the context of the declared sustainability goals. Data repositories include pertinent literature and topical reports from private and public economic, policy and industry research and advisory institutions and firms