Mixed methods in land change research: towards integration

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89580/1/j.1475-5661.2011.00482.x.pd

New European socio-economic scenarios for climate change research: operationalising concepts to extend the shared socio-economic pathways

Scenarios have been recognised as a useful tool for planning, which have resulted in a strong increase in the number of (multi-scale) scenarios in climate change research. This paper addresses the need for methodological progress and testing of conceptual considerations, by extending the global shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs). We present a set of four European SSPs until 2100 and a novel method to develop qualitative stories for Europe equivalent to the global SSPs starting from an existing set of European scenarios. Similar to the global SSPs, the set includes a sustainable future with global cooperation and less intensive lifestyles (We are the World; Eur-SSP1); a future in which countries struggle to maintain living standards in a high-carbon intensive Europe (Icarus; Eur-SSP3); a world in which power becomes concentrated in a small elite and where Europe becomes an important player (Riders on the Storm; Eur-SSP4); and one where a lack of environmental concern leads to the over-exploitation of fossil fuel resources addressed by technological solutions (Fossil-fuelled Development; Eur-SSP5). We conclude that the global SSPs are a good starting point for developing equivalent continental scale scenarios that, in turn, can serve multiple purposes. There are, however, methodological challenges related to the choice for equivalence and the exact methods by which scenarios are constructed that need to be tested further

Bridging uncertainty concepts across narratives and simulations in environmental scenarios

Uncertainties in our understanding of current and future climate change projections, impacts and vulnerabilities are structured by scientists using scenarios, which are generally in qualitative (narrative) and quantitative (numerical) forms. Although conceptually strong, qualitative and quantitative scenarios have limited complementarity due to the lack of a fundamental bridge between two different concepts of uncertainty: linguistic and epistemic. Epistemic uncertainty is represented by the range of scenarios and linguistic variables within them, while linguistic uncertainty is represented by the translation of those linguistic variables via the fuzzy set approach. Both are therefore incorporated in the models that utilise the final quantifications. The application of this method is demonstrated in a stakeholder-led development of socioeconomic scenarios. The socioeconomic scenarios include several vague elements due to heterogeneous linguistic interpretations of future change on the part of stakeholders. We apply the so-called ‘Centre of Gravity’ (CoG) operator to defuzzify the quantifications of linguistic values provided by stakeholders. The results suggest that, in these cases, uniform distributions provide a close fit to the membership functions derived from ranges of values provided by stakeholders. As a result, the 90 or 95% intervals of the probability density functions are similar to the 0.1 or 0.05 degrees of membership of the linguistic values of linguistic variables. By bridging different uncertainty concepts (linguistic and epistemic uncertainties), this study offers a substantial step towards linking qualitative and quantitative scenarios

Transition pathways to sustainability in greater than 2 C climate futures of Europe

The complex challenges arising from climate change that exceeds the +2 °C target (termed ‘high-end climate change’) in Europe require new integrative responses to support transformations to a more sustainable future. We present a novel methodology that combines transition management and high-end climate and socioeconomic change scenarios to identify pathways and move Europe closer to sustainability. Eighteen pathways have been co-created with stakeholders through a participatory process. The pathways support Europe in moving towards a desirable future vision, through top-down and bottom-up actions that lower greenhouse gas emissions, reduce impacts of and vulnerabilities to climate and socioeconomic changes and enhance well-being. Analysis shows that the pathways that are robust to future scenario uncertainty are those that shift Europe towards sustainable lifestyles, support and strengthen good governance for sustainability and promote adaptive resource management for water, agriculture and energy. The methodology can support the design of the urgent actions needed to meet the requirements of the Paris Agreement and to transform Europe, in preparation for an uncertain future

Correction: Increased policy ambition is needed to avoid the effects of climate change and reach carbon removal targets in Portugal

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http:// creat iveco mmons. org/ licen ses/ by/4. 0/.J. Pedersen, L. F. Dias, P. M. M. Soares, and F. D. Santos would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the EEA-Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and the Portuguese Environment Agency through Pre-defined Project-2 National Roadmap for Adaptation XXI (PDP-2), by the Portuguese Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) - UIDB/00329/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/00329/2020), UIDB/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/50019/2020), UIDP/50019/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/50019/2020), and LA/P/0068/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0068/2020). J. Azevedo would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Portuguese Fundacao para a Ciencia e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) - CIMO, UIDB/00690/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDB/00690/2020), UIDP/00690/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/UIDP/00690/2020), and SusTEC, LA/P/0007/2020 (https://doi.org/10.54499/LA/P/0007/2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Increased policy ambition is needed to avoid the effects of climate change and reach carbon removal targets in Portugal

The Paris Agreement's goal of limiting global warming hinges on forest carbon sequestration as a key in several national strategies. However, Portugal's rising forest fire occurrences threaten its ability to meet ambitious 2030 and 2050 carbon sequestration targets. Considering fire and forest trends, this study aims to quantify whether Portugal can reach its carbon sequestration ambitions as stated in its 2030 and 2050 targets. We tested three national forest scenario extensions of the global Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) and Shared Policy Assumptions (SPAs) based on a dynamic model, simulating forest area and carbon sequestration related to future fire risk and policies of fire management, forest management, restoration of burnt areas, and climate change adaptation. The model projects a rapidly decreasing forest area under existing Portuguese policies (PT-SSP3), a slow decline under moderate policy improvements (PT-SSP2), and an almost stable forest area under long-term sustainable policy developments (PT-SSP1). In PT-SSP3, carbon sequestration will be reduced to 60% by 2050 compared to 2015, while it declines to about 85% and 90% under PT-SSP2 and PT-SSP1, respectively. It is still plausible to reach Portugal's 2030 sequestration obligations under the EU's Paris Agreement target under all three scenarios, while the Portuguese GHG neutrality target is not reached in the presented scenarios. Our four introduced policy areas (increasing focus on fire and forest management, forest restoration, and climate change adaptation of forest stands) must be supplemented by other policy strategies, such as reforestation.J. Pedersen, L. F. Dias, P. M. M. Soares, and F.D. Santos would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the EEA-Financial Mechanism 2014-2021 and the Portuguese Environment Agency through Pre-defined Project-2 National Roadmap for Adaptation XXI (PDP-2), by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) - UIDB/00329/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10. 54499/ UIDB/00329/ 2020), UIDB/50019/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10.54499/ UIDB/50019/ 2020), UIDP/50019/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10. 54499/ UIDP/50019/ 2020), and LA/P/0068/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10. 54499/ LA/P/0068/ 2020). J. Azevedo would like to acknowledge the financial support provided by the Portuguese Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) I.P./MCTES through national funds (PIDDAC) - CIMO, UIDB/00690/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10. 54499/ UIDB/ 00690/ 2020), UIDP/00690/2020 (https:// doi. org/ 10. 54499/ UIDP/ 00690/ 2020), and SusTEC, LA/P/0007/2020 (https://doi.org/10. 54499/ LA/P/0007/2020).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Archetyping shared socioeconomic pathways across scales: an application to central Asia and European case studies

The complex interactions of drivers represented in scenarios and climate change impacts across scales have led to the development of multiscale scenarios. Since the recent development of global shared socioeconomic pathways (SSPs), which have started being downscaled to lower scales, the potential of scenarios to be relevant for decision making and facilitate appreciation and inclusion of different perspectives has been increasing, compared with a single-scale global scenario set. However, in practice, quantitative downscaling of global scenarios results in narratives that are compressed from the global level to fit the local context to enhance consistency between global and local scales. We brought forward the concept of scenario archetypes to analyze multiscale SSP scenario narratives and highlight important diverging assumptions within the same archetype. Our methodology applied scenario archetypes both as typologies, to allocate specific cases of scenarios into existing scenario archetypes, and building blocks, conceptualized with worldviews from cultural theory. Although global SSPs generally match existing archetypes and tend to be well defined, the socially unequal SSPs at subglobal scales are more nuanced, and dominant worldviews are much less straighforward to interpret than in global scenarios. The closest match was the great transition–sustainability (SSP1) archetype, whereas the most divergent was the market forces–fossil fuel development (SSP5) archetype. Overall, our results highlight the need to improve uptake of bottom-up approaches in global scenarios to improve appreciation of different perspectives as sought after in multiscale scenarios

Advancing the use of scenarios to understand society’s capacity to achieve the 1.5 degree target

With a range of potential pathways to a sustainable future compatible with the Paris Agreement 1.5 °C target, scenario analysis has emerged as a key tool in studies of climate change mitigation and adaptation. A wide range of alternative scenarios have been created, and core amongst these are five socio-economic scenarios (Shared Socio-economic Pathways or SSPs) and four emission scenarios (Representative Concentration Pathways or RCPs). Whilst mitigation scenarios (the Shared Policy Assumptions, or SPAs) have been developed for each SSP-RCP combination, describing the actions necessary to match the climate pathway of the RCP, there has not yet been a systematic approach to address whether and how these actions can be enabled in practice. We present a novel and transferable framework to understand society’s capacity to achieve the 1.5 °C target, based on four participatory case studies using the SSP-RCP scenarios. The methodology builds on a framework for categorising different types of societal capitals and capacities and assessing their impact on the potential to implement different types of mitigation actions. All four case studies show that SSP1 has the highest potential to reach the target. Although environmental awareness is high in both SSP1 and SSP4, continued social inequalities in SSP4 restrict society’s capacity to transform, despite economic growth. In the two least environmentally-aware SSPs, SSP3 and SSP5, the transformation potential is low, but the view on capitals and capacities nonetheless helps identify opportunities for actors to develop and implement mitigation actions. The study highlights that techno-economic assessments of climate strategies need to be complemented by consideration of the critical role played by social and human capital, and by societal capacity to mobilise and create these capitals despite different socio-economic trends. These capitals and capacities are essential to enable the rapid innovation, behavioural change and international co-ordination needed to achieve the 1.5 °C target

Climate-smart land use requires local solutions, transdisciplinary research, policy coherence and transparency

Successfully meeting the mitigation and adaptation targets of the Paris Climate Agreement (PA) will depend on strengthening the ties between forests and agriculture. Climate-smart land use can be achieved by integrating climate-smart agriculture (CSA) and REDD+. The focus on agriculture for food security within a changing climate, and on forests for climate change mitigation and adaptation, can be achieved simultaneously with a transformational change in the land-use sector. Striving for both independently will lead to competition for land, inefficiencies in monitoring and conflicting agendas. Practical solutions exist for specific contexts that can lead to increased agricultural output and forest protection. Landscape-level emissions accounting can be used to identify these practices. Transdisciplinary research agendas can identify and prioritize solutions and targets for integrated mitigation and adaptation interventions. Policy coherence must be achieved at a number of levels, from international to local, to avoid conflicting incentives. Transparency must lastly be integrated, through collaborative design of projects, and open data and methods. Climate-smart land use requires all these elements, and will increase the likelihood of successful REDD+ and CSA interventions. This will support the PA as well as other initiatives as part of the Sustainable Development Goals