380 likes | 527 Views
Learning about climate change …. Integrated assessments. Thomas E. Downing Stockholm Environment Institute Oxford. Overview of issues (20 minutes) Cognitive mapping of an integrated assessment issue (30 minutes) Dangers in IA (20 minutes) Conditions of application (10 minutes)
E N D
Learning about climate change … Integrated assessments Thomas E. Downing Stockholm Environment Institute Oxford
Overview of issues (20 minutes) • Cognitive mapping of an integrated assessment issue (30 minutes) • Dangers in IA (20 minutes) • Conditions of application (10 minutes) • Discussion
Introduction • What have we learned from the use of Integrated Assessment Models in formulating responses to climate change? • Contributor to the first regional integrated assessment; model of the economic impact of climate change
Inequitable Development Sustainability Collapse Dangers in climate policy
Earth System Interactions • GHG emissions • Climate • Terrestrial ecosystems • Source: MIT global change programme
Understanding Earth • Penguin trials: test the waters and see if anything is happening • Lilliput principle: experimental microcosms such as Biosphere II • Eagle eye: observing Earth’s panorama from space • Minah: digital mimicry through simulation modelling After Schellnhuber, 1999, Nature
Questions... • What is an IAM? • What should IAMs do? • What needs to be done to improve IAMs?
What is IA? • IA is a process of stakeholder engagement that includes insight from models (IAMs) • Foundations in acid rain, trade and world environment models • A means to gain insight into complex environmental, economic and social interactions
Policy issues • What is the advantage of trading greenhouse gas emissions? • Climate-economic integration, regional trade • How much CO2 could terrestrial ecosystems absorb? • Climate-land use integration, geographic resolution • What should be the priorities for adaptation? • Climate-impacts integration, local-global hierarchy, autonomous adaptation • Is technology the answer? • Climate-society integration, innovation, geographic diffusion, market transformation
Integration... How many scales? Who participates? Which sectors?
IAMs Optimising Simulation CETA DICE SLICE Page ICAM Yohe DIAM PRICE PEF FUND Rice AS/ExM Merge3 SGM HCRA Targets MIT-EPPA EDM3 Green ABARE IMAGE AIM Miasma G-Cubed OF Geographical Trade
Economic policy to abate greenhouse gas emissions Land use change and terrestrial carbon cycles Equity in climate change impacts Three examples
Economic policy • What are the impacts of GHG abatement policy: • Trade • Energy prices • Capital costs and investment • Transnational corporations • Secondary effects • Two studies • Oxford Institute for Energy Studies • G-cubed
Fossil Fuels in a Changing Climate Impacts of the Kyoto Protocol and Developing Country Participation Ulrich Bartsch and Benito Müller Published by Oxford University Press, 2000 http://associnst.ox.ac.uk/energy
ROE EIT ROO EUM USA CHN JPN AOE IND ROW ANI W LAM The Oxford Model for Climate Policy Analysis (CLIMOX)
GC Target 550A* 14.4% Kyoto • Global Target: 14.4 per cent reduction from BaU 'Sizing the Cake': Global CO2 Energy Emissions (Gt CO2) OIES BaU • 550ppm CO2 concentrations = ‘acceptable’
Annex I 67% 74% Non-Annex I ‘Distributing the Cake’: The Problem Grandfathering Per Capita
0.25 0.75
180 150 Actual Reductions 120 Assigned Amounts 90 Cartel Supply 60 30 0 -30 -60 EIT JPN IND ANI ROE USA AOE EUM LAM ROO CHN ROW GLOBAL • Emission Trading induces a global emission reduction of 5 per cent over the required target Energy Emissions: Reductions and Assigned Amounts in 2020, % of BaU
Surplus Permit Sales Permit Acquisition Cost of Domestic Action JI/CDM Permit Sales Net Mitigation Benefits/Costs (+/-) GC: 2020 Emission Mitigation Costs/Benefits 60 40 20 0 1995 $ bn -20 -40 -60 -80 USA Rest of Japan EU EIT MENA Latin ANI China RoW India OECD America
Real- Income-Per-Capita Index 3.5 3 2.5 2 1.5 1 1995 1995 0.5 0 EU EIT ANI USA India LAM Japan ROW China MENA R-OECD BaU BaU GC GC BaU GC Real Income Index;
Effect of international trading on permit prices,2010, $/MTCSource: G-cubed Model, W. McKibben
Land use • Shifts in biomes • Carbon storage and sequestration • Methane, nitrous oxides • Agroecological potential • Species and biodiversity • Water • Health • Secondary effects
Scenarios of land use change Source: IMAGE2 Model
Equity in impacts Notes: 1% PRTP discounting. Source: ExternE Project.
Cognitive issue mapping • Select an issue: • Carbon sequestration in managed ecosystems • Damage valuation of climate change impacts • Others • Brainstorming of elements • Clustering • Mapping relationships • Ideas for data, models and analysis
What should IAMs do? Economic growth Sustainable environments Social equity
Dangers in IAM • IA wars: “My clients appreciate my model” • Wrong question: “Ask not what you need but what I can do” • Anchoring: “Don’t trust the numbers, IAMs only provide insight” • Polarisation: “Criticise my wife but don’t mess with my model” • Complexity: “Read the fine detail” • Restricted discourse: “Talk the talk, walk the walk” • Symbolic structuration: “Any model that mediates demand through prices means that you have to raise prices.”
What needs to be done? • Procedures for evaluating IAMs • Model representation: what is reality? • Evaluating changing institutions: how will future societies evolve to cope with global change? • Users and uses: how to foster insight?
Conditions of application • Model representation • Natural systems • Resolution and scaling • Validation • Decision agents • Agent motivation • For example: • Linking resource management decisions to macro-economy and feedback from the environment
Conditions of application • Changing institutions • Societal structure • Cultural norms • For example: • Technological innovation and diffusion • Market transformation • Sustainable consumption
Conditions of application • User/policy context • Stakeholder participation • Hypothesis testing • Verification • Transparency • Documentation • New processes of science-policy formulation?
Learning about climate change …Integrated Assessments