Three necessary conditions for establishing effective sustainable development goals in the Anthropocene

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals

Cooperation and Competition in Climate Change Policies: Mitigation and Climate Engineering when Countries are Asymmetric

We study a dynamic game of climate policy design in terms of emissions and solar radiation management (SRM) involving two heterogeneous countries or group of countries. Countries emit greenhouse gasses (GHGs), and can block incoming radiation by unilateral SRM activities, thus reducing global temperature. Heterogeneity is modelled in terms of the social cost of SRM, the environmental damages due to global warming, the productivity of emissions in terms of generating private benefits, the rate of impatience, and the private cost of geoengineering. We determine the impact of asymmetry on mitigation and SRM activities, concentration of GHGs, and global temperature, and we examine whether a tradeoff actually emerges between mitigation and SRM. Our results could provide some insights into a currently emerging debate regarding mitigation and SRM methods to control climate change, especially since asymmetries seem to play an important role in affecting incentives for cooperation or unilateral actions

Climate change and development in South Africa: the impact of rising temperatures on economic productivity and labour availability

Climate change has a major impact on productivity of different economic sectors as well as different labour groups. Here we study the crucial linkage between gradual climate change and availability of low-skilled labour in rural areas of South Africa. Using a nationally representative panel of micro-survey data, we derive marginal impacts of rising temperatures on labour availability. Our econometric findings suggest that optimal conditions maximizing weekly labour supply are heterogeneous across sectors. We develop an analytical model of overlapping generations to study the long-term impacts of future climate and socioeconomic changes on labour supply and welfare. Overall, high exposure of low-skilled labour to climate change and rising temperatures reduces the supply of low-skilled labour which in turn, reduces the wage gap between high-skilled and low-skilled labour. However, the overall impact of climate change on economy remains negative and the welfare in terms of output per adult drops by 20% compared to the baseline case with no climate change

Optimal Carbon Dioxide Removal in Face of Ocean Carbon Sink Feedback

Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a potentially important climate strategy for attaining low climate stabilization objectives. However, climate analysis has indicated a possible weakening of the ocean carbon sinks -the largest in the world- in relation to CDR deployment. Here, we provide an economic appraisal to assess the sensitivity of CDR and conventional abatement to CO2 outgassing from the oceans. We develop a theoretical framework to study the impact of the ocean-to-atmosphere transfer on the optimal mitigation strategies under different regimes that control the relationship between CO2 outgassing and the amount of CDR. We show that the optimal levels of emissions and CDR are correlated to the effectiveness of CDR expressed as a linear function of atmospheric concentrations. We incorporate this effect into an integrated assessment model of climate and economy (DICE model) and confirm the theoretical findings with numerical simulations. Further, we perform a sensitivity analysis to find the range of optimal abatement and CDR actions under different values of the CDR effectiveness coefficient

Climate Engineering under Deep Uncertainty and Heterogeneity

Climate Engineering, and in particular Solar Radiation Management (SRM) has become a widely discussed climate policy option to study in recent years. However, its potentially strategic nature and unforeseen side effects provide major policy and scientific challenges. We study the role of the SRM implementation and its strategic dimension in a model with two heterogeneous countries with the notable feature of model misspecification on the impacts from SRM. We find that deep uncertainty leads to a reduction in SRM deployment both under cooperation and strategic behavior, which is a more relevant issue if countries act strategically. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the heterogeneity in impacts from SRM has an asymmetric effect on the optimal policy and could typically lead to unilateral SRM implementation. We also consider heterogeneous degrees of ambiguity aversion, in which case the more confident country only will use SRM

Climate engineering under deep uncertainty

Climate engineering, and in particular solar radiation management (SRM), is attracting in- creasing attention as a climate policy option. However, its potentially strategic nature and unforeseen side effects provide major policy and scientific challenges. We study the role of SRM in a two-country model with the notable feature of deep uncertainty modeled as model misspecification of SRM side effects. We find that deep uncertainty leads to a reduction in SRM deployment under both global cooperation and strategic Nash behavior, and that the effect is larger if countries act strategically. Furthermore, we demonstrate that if countries have different model confidence about SRM impacts, then the more confident country will engage more strongly in using SRM, leading this country to \u201cfree drive\u201d

Challenges and Opportunities for Integrated Modeling of Climate Engineering

The Paris Agreement has set stringent temperature targets to limit global warming to 2°C above preindustrial level, with efforts to stay well below 2°C. At the same time, its bottom-up approach with voluntary national contributions makes the implementation of these ambitious targets particularly challenging. Climate engineering – both through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) – is currently discussed to potentially complement mitigation and adaptation. Results from integrated assessment models already suggest a significant role for some forms of climate engineering in achieving stringent climate objectives1. However, these estimates and their underlying assumptions are uncertain and currently heavily debated2–4. By reviewing the existing literature and reporting the views of experts, we identify research gaps and priorities for improving the integrated assessment of climate engineering. Results point to differentiated roles of CDR and SRM as complementary strategies to the traditional ones, as well as diverse challenges for an adequate representation in integrated assessment models. We identify potential synergies for model development which can help better represent mitigation and adaptation challenges, as well as climate engineering

Challenges and Opportunities for Integrated Modeling of Climate Engineering

The Paris Agreement has set stringent temperature targets to limit global warming to 2°C above preindustrial level, with efforts to stay well below 2°C. At the same time, its bottom-up approach with voluntary national contributions makes the implementation of these ambitious targets particularly challenging. Climate engineering – both through carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM) – is currently discussed to potentially complement mitigation and adaptation. Results from integrated assessment models already suggest a significant role for some forms of climate engineering in achieving stringent climate objectives1. However, these estimates and their underlying assumptions are uncertain and currently heavily debated2–4. By reviewing the existing literature and reporting the views of experts, we identify research gaps and priorities for improving the integrated assessment of climate engineering. Results point to differentiated roles of CDR and SRM as complementary strategies to the traditional ones, as well as diverse challenges for an adequate representation in integrated assessment models. We identify potential synergies for model development which can help better represent mitigation and adaptation challenges, as well as climate engineering

Three necessary conditions for establishing effective Sustainable Development Goals in the Anthropocene

The purpose of the United Nations-guided process to establish Sustainable Development Goals is to galvanize governments and civil society to rise to the interlinked environmental, societal, and economic challenges we face in the Anthropocene. We argue that the process of setting Sustainable Development Goals should take three key aspects into consideration. First, it should embrace an integrated social-ecological system perspective and acknowledge the key dynamics that such systems entail, including the role of ecosystems in sustaining human wellbeing, multiple cross-scale interactions, and uncertain thresholds. Second, the process needs to address trade-offs between the ambition of goals and the feasibility in reaching them, recognizing biophysical, social, and political constraints. Third, the goal-setting exercise and the management of goal implementation need to be guided by existing knowledge about the principles, dynamics, and constraints of social change processes at all scales, from the individual to the global. Combining these three aspects will increase the chances of establishing and achieving effective Sustainable Development Goals