Learning about climate change

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Learning about climate change
Integrated assessments

• Thomas E. Downing
• Stockholm Environment Institute
• Oxford

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• 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

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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

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Dangers in climate policy
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• Earth System Interactions
• GHG emissions
• Climate
• Terrestrial ecosystems
• Source MIT global change programme

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Understanding Earth

• Penguin trials test the waters and see if
  anything is happening
• Lilliput principle experimental microcosms such
  as Biosphere II
• Eagle eye observing Earths panorama from space
• Minah digital mimicry through simulation
  modelling

After Schellnhuber, 1999, Nature
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Questions...

• What is an IAM?
• What should IAMs do?
• What needs to be done to improve IAMs?

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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

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What is an IAM?
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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

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Integration...
How many scales?
Who participates?
Which sectors?
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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
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Three examples

• Economic policy to abate greenhouse gas emissions
• Land use change and terrestrial carbon cycles
• Equity in climate change impacts

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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

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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
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The Oxford Model for Climate Policy Analysis
(CLIMOX)
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The CLIMOX Production Structure
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'Sizing the Cake' Global CO2 Energy Emissions
(Gt CO2)
OIES BaU

• 550ppm CO2 concentrations acceptable

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Distributing the Cake The Problem
Grandfathering
Per Capita
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0.25
0.75
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Energy Emissions Reductions and Assigned
Amounts in 2020, of BaU
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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
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Real Income Index
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Effect of international trading on permit
prices,2010, /MTCSource G-cubed Model, W.
McKibben
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Land use

• Shifts in biomes
• Carbon storage and sequestration
• Methane, nitrous oxides
• Agroecological potential
• Species and biodiversity
• Water
• Health
• Secondary effects

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Scenarios of land use change
Source IMAGE2 Model
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Equity in impacts
Notes 1 PRTP discounting. Source ExternE
Project.
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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

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What should IAMs do?
Economic growth
Sustainable environments
Social equity
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What should IAMs do?
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Dangers in IAM

• IA wars My clients appreciate my model
• Wrong question Ask not what you need but what
  I can do
• Anchoring Dont trust the numbers, IAMs only
  provide insight
• Polarisation Criticise my wife but dont 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.

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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?

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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

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Agents in IAM
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Conditions of application

• Changing institutions
• Societal structure
• Cultural norms
• For example
• Technological innovation and diffusion
• Market transformation
• Sustainable consumption

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A relational strategy...
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Conditions of application

• User/policy context
• Stakeholder participation
• Hypothesis testing
• Verification
• Transparency
• Documentation
• New processes of science-policy formulation?

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Learning about climate change

• Integrated Assessments