Smart Specialisation, Sustainable Development Goals and Environmental Commons

This report proposes a new transformative narrative to help guide the next phase of Smart Specialisation activities. The narrative helps align Smart Specialisation with the European Green Deal and the UN 2030 Agenda by offering directionality and combining different levels of policy to achieve the needed sustainability transformations. The report highlights the role of policy coherence and coordination for the transformation. It presents approaches to increase policy coherence to harness synergies and alleviate trade-offs across different objectives with a focus on environmental issues. Throughout this report a number of selected cases is used to illustrate the conceptual discussion developed in a more theoretical part of the report. These cases presented in the report cover countries and regions from within and outside the European Union. EU countries and outside the EU and present lessons learnt on the different topics linked to Smart Specialisation, sustainability and environmental commons. The report concludes by a discussion on how to orient existing S3 approaches towards sustainability.JRC.B.3 - Territorial Developmen

Österreichischer Sachstandsbericht Klimawandel 2014

The AAR14 is the first Assessment Report on climate Change in Austria assessing the Impact of climate change and the Needs and possibilities of mitigation and Adaptation. This three-volume Report, developed through a multiple peer-Review process including stakeholder participation, presents a coherent assessment of scientific knowledge about climate and makes it accessible for both decision-makers and the General public. Approximately 240 scientists from 50 institutions have participated in this national Assessment ReportDer AAR14 ist der erste Sachstandsbericht zum Klimawandel in Österreich, zu dessen Auswirkungen, und den Erfordernissen und Möglichkeiten der Minderung und Anpassung. Der drei-bändige Bericht, der einen mehrstufigen Peer-Review-Prozess inklusive Stakeholder-Partizipation durchlaufen hat, legt den wissenschaftlich gesicherten Kenntnisstand für Österreich kohärent dar und macht ihn Entscheidungstragenden und der interessierten Öffentlichkeit zugänglich. An dem nationalen Sachstandbericht haben rund 240 WissenschafterInnen aus 50 Institutionen mitgewirkt.Der Österreichische Sachstandsbericht Klimawandel 2014 (AAR14) stellt einen Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)-ähnlichen Bericht dar. Er besteht aus drei Bänden, in denen das bestehende Wissen zum Klimawandel in Österreich, zu dessen Auswirkungen, und den Erfordernissen und Möglichkeiten der Minderung und Anpassung zusammengefasst wird. Der Bericht verfolgt das Ziel, den wissenschaftlichen Kenntnisstand für Österreich kohärent und vollständig darzulegen und diesen auch in Form von politikrelevanten Analysen an die Österreichische Bundesregierung und politische Entscheidungsgremien auf allen Ebenen zu übermitteln, bzw. um dadurch Entscheidungsgrundlagen auch für den privaten Sektor und einen Wissensfundus für akademische Institutionen bereitzustellen. Ähnlich den IPCC-Sachstandsberichten liegt dem AAR14 das Prinzip zugrunde, entscheidungsrelevant zu sein, aber keinen empfehlenden Charakter zu haben

Österreichischer Sachstandsbericht Klimawandel 2014

The AAR14 is the first Assessment Report on climate Change in Austria assessing the Impact of climate change and the Needs and possibilities of mitigation and Adaptation. This three-volume Report, developed through a multiple peer-Review process including stakeholder participation, presents a coherent assessment of scientific knowledge about climate and makes it accessible for both decision-makers and the General public. Approximately 240 scientists from 50 institutions have participated in this national Assessment Repor

The representative concentration pathways: An overview

This paper summarizes the development process and main characteristics of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs), a set of four new pathways developed for the climate modeling community as a basis for long-term and near-term modeling experiments. The four RCPs together span the range of year 2100 radiative forcing values found in the open literature, i.e. from 2.6 to 8.5 W/m2. The RCPs are the product of an innovative collaboration between integrated assessment modelers, climate modelers, terrestrial ecosystem modelers and emission inventory experts. The resulting product forms a comprehensive data set with high spatial and sectoral resolutions for the period extending to 2100. Land use and emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gases are reported mostly at a 0.5 × 0.5 degree spatial resolution, with air pollutants also provided per sector (for well-mixed gases, a coarser resolution is used). The underlying integrated assessment model outputs for land use, atmospheric emissions and concentration data were harmonized across models and scenarios to ensure consistency with historical observations while preserving individual scenario trends. For most variables, the RCPs cover a wide range of the existing literature. The RCPs are supplemented with extensions (Extended Concentration Pathways, ECPs), which allow climate modeling experiments through the year 2300. The RCPs are an important development in climate research and provide a potential foundation for further research and assessment, including emissions mitigation and impact analysis

All options, not silver bullets, needed to limit global warming to 1.5 °C: a scenario appraisal

Climate science provides strong evidence of the necessity of limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, in line with the Paris Climate Agreement. The IPCC 1.5 °C special report (SR1.5) presents 414 emissions scenarios modelled for the report, of which around 50 are classified as '1.5 °C scenarios', with no or low temperature overshoot. These emission scenarios differ in their reliance on individual mitigation levers, including reduction of global energy demand, decarbonisation of energy production, development of land-management systems, and the pace and scale of deploying carbon dioxide removal (CDR) technologies. The reliance of 1.5 °C scenarios on these levers needs to be critically assessed in light of the potentials of the relevant technologies and roll-out plans. We use a set of five parameters to bundle and characterise the mitigation levers employed in the SR1.5 1.5 °C scenarios. For each of these levers, we draw on the literature to define 'medium' and 'high' upper bounds that delineate between their 'reasonable', 'challenging' and 'speculative' use by mid century. We do not find any 1.5 °C scenarios that stay within all medium upper bounds on the five mitigation levers. Scenarios most frequently 'over use' CDR with geological storage as a mitigation lever, whilst reductions of energy demand and carbon intensity of energy production are 'over used' less frequently. If we allow mitigation levers to be employed up to our high upper bounds, we are left with 22 of the SR1.5 1.5 °C scenarios with no or low overshoot. The scenarios that fulfil these criteria are characterised by greater coverage of the available mitigation levers than those scenarios that exceed at least one of the high upper bounds. When excluding the two scenarios that exceed the SR1.5 carbon budget for limiting global warming to 1.5 °C, this subset of 1.5 °C scenarios shows a range of 15–22 Gt CO2 (16–22 Gt CO2 interquartile range) for emissions in 2030. For the year of reaching net zero CO2 emissions the range is 2039–2061 (2049–2057 interquartile range)

Defining a sustainable development target space for 2030 and 2050

With the establishment of the sustainable development goals (SDGs), countries worldwide agreed to a prosperous, socially inclusive, and environmentally sustainable future for all. This ambition, however, exposes a critical gap in science-based insights, namely on how to achieve the 17 SDGs simultaneously. Quantitative goal-seeking scenario studies could help explore the needed systems' transformations. This requires a clear definition of the "target space." The 169 targets and 232 indicators used for monitoring SDG implementation cannot be used for this; they are too many, too broad, unstructured, and sometimes not formulated quantitatively. Here, we propose a streamlined set of science-based indicators and associated target values that are quantifiable and actionable to make scenario analysis meaningful, relevant, and simple enough to be transparent and communicable. The 36 targets are based on the SDGs, existing multilateral agreements, literature, and expert assessment. They include 2050 as a longer-term reference point. This target space can guide researchers in developing new sustainable development pathways