Potential impact of albedo incorporation in boreal forest sector climate change policy effectiveness

Forests have an important role to play in climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration and wood supply. However, the lower albedo of mature forests compared to bare land implies that focusing only on GHG accounting may lead to biased estimates of forestry's total climatic impacts. An economic model with a high degree of detail of the Norwegian forestry and forest industries is used to simulate GHG fluxes and albedo impacts for the next decades. Albedo is incorporated in a carbon tax/subsidy scheme in the Norwegian forest sector using a partial, spatial equilibrium model. While a price of EU€100/tCO₂e that targets GHG fluxes only results in reduced harvests, the same price including albedo leads to harvest levels that are five times higher in the first five years, with 39% of the national productive forest land base being cleared. The results suggest that policies that only consider GHG fluxes and ignore changes in albedo will not lead to an optimal use of the forest sector for climate change mitigation.

Policy relevance

Bare land reflects a larger share of incoming solar energy than dense forest and thus has higher albedo. Earlier research has suggested that changes in albedo caused by management of boreal forest may be as important as carbon fluxes for the forest's overall global warming impacts. The presented analysis is the first attempt to link albedo to national-scale forest climate policies. A policy with subsidies to forest owners that generate carbon sequestration and taxes levied on carbon emissions leads to a reduced forest harvest. However, including albedo in the policy alongside carbon fluxes yields very different results, causing initial harvest levels to increase substantially. The inclusion of albedo impacts will make harvests more beneficial for climate change mitigation as compared to a carbon-only policy. Hence, it is likely that carbon policies that ignore albedo will not lead to optimal forest management for climate change mitigation.     

Applying personal carbon trading: a proposed ‘Carbon,Health and Savings System’ for British Columbia,Canada

Addressing climate change requires the synergy of technological, behavioural and market mechanisms. This article proposes a policy framework that integrates the three, deploying personal carbon trading as a key element within a policy portfolio to reduce personal carbon footprints. It draws on policy and human motivation literatures that address the behavioural changes that may be needed in the context of a long-term threat such as climate change. This proposal builds on an analysis of the British Columbia carbon tax, international examples of carbon pricing instruments and strategies for behavioural change such as social networks, loyalty management, mobile apps and gamification. Interviews were conducted with experts in financial services, energy conservation and clean technology, as well as with specialists in climate, health and taxation policy. Their input, together with a review of the theoretical literature and practical case studies, informed the proposed design of a Carbon, Health and Saving System for promoting individual engagement and collective action by linking long-term climate mitigation measures with short-term personal and social goals, including health, recreation and social reinforcement.

Policy Relevance

This article identifies areas for climate policy innovation and recommends policies that can support, promote and enable personal carbon budgeting and collective action. Although this study is focused on British Columbia, both the input provided by key opinion leaders and the proposed framework are applicable to other jurisdictions.

This policy proposal shows how personal carbon trading could work in the context of a Canadian province with an existing climate mitigation policy. It also specifies a minimum viable product approach to establishing the economic, social and technological foundations for personal carbon trading.

The Carbon, Health and Saving System identifies the technologies and stakeholders needed to implement personal carbon trading, and offers the possibility of motivating a widespread conscious human response in the event that carbon taxation proves insufficient to generate economic adaptation in a changing climate.     

From burden-sharing to opportunity-sharing: unlocking the climate negotiations

In conventional thinking on climate negotiations, traditional fossil fuel-based economic growth is coupled with carbon emissions, thus mitigation has been regarded as a burden on economic growth. The scarcity within the global emission budget and the interpretation of climate change as ‘global public goods’ have led climate change negotiations into a burden-sharing deadlock. However, some recent economics studies suggest that mitigation could actually promote local economic growth opportunities; consequently increasing the incentives for unilateral mitigation actions. This article highlights the implications for the strategies of unlocking the climate negotiations deadlock. Following an explanation of how climate change negotiations have led to a burden-sharing game and have become a deadlock, some new ways of thinking (based on the emerging literature) are used to suggest how mitigation could promote local economic growth.Policy relevanceOne policy implication is the need to change the current mindset in global climate change negotiations. The current framing of burden-sharing can be abandoned in favour of opportunity-sharing. This more positive approach will stimulate progress on climate action. Therefore, green growth should be situated at the heart of post-2020 climate change regime. A new two-track architecture is proposed for achieving the transformation as a combined top-down and bottom-up approach. A lower legally binding target based on equity principles of common but differentiated responsibilities (CBDR) could form a more politically realistic and inclusive basis for participation. To complement this, a green growth club would promote a higher voluntary global ambition and accelerate mitigation.     

Could Cohesion Policy push EU climate efforts?

The main purpose of this article is to evaluate the extent to which the Cohesion Policy of the EU contributes to its climate change mitigation effort. While climate change mitigation and the EU Cohesion Policy have been both thoroughly studied theoretically, the novelty of the present article lies in an analysis of their mutual relationship. Also, a unique feature of this research is an analysis of the contribution of the Cohesion Policy to climate change mitigation over a period of 20 years, including a comparison of the three last programming periods (2000–2006, 2007–2013 and 2014–2020). The results of this research suggest that, while the beginning of the new millennium saw the Cohesion Policy neglecting the issue of climate change mitigation, the current programming period (2014–2020) placed it among its key priorities. This conclusion is supported by a comprehensive set of data on five selected indicators. This article also displays the results against the perspective of the overall climate change mitigation objectives of the EU.

POLICY RELEVANCE

The present article shows how a policy, which used to be considered rather distant from climate change, progressively adopted climate change mitigation as one of its principal objectives. As such, it provides a practical guidance on the integration of climate change mitigation in other policy areas, which may be applied not only in a supranational organisation but also on a national, regional or local level.     

Lessons from co-impacts assessment under the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) Programme

The MAPS Programme has been active in Brazil, Chile, Colombia and Peru in supporting the development of an evidence base to inform the processes involved in climate mitigation policy-making. The programme combines detailed quantitative analysis with an extensive stakeholder engagement process to provide policy and decision makers with the information required for long-term climate mitigation planning.

In recognition of the critical need to consider the developmental context and agenda in climate policy-making, the projects undertaken in these countries have experimented with various types of assessments of developmental impacts at both the macro and micro levels. These impacts have been collectively termed co-impacts to reflect the fact that these may be either positive or negative. In this article the value and challenges associated with co-impacts work for climate mitigation policy are considered. The value of including co-impacts analysis in the MAPS processes included increased stakeholder buy-in, making the case for mitigation action, informing INDCs and the prioritization of particular mitigation actions. Challenges include those associated with obtaining locally relevant data, the selection and operation of appropriate macro-economic models and analytical approaches and working with multidisciplinary teams.

The article concludes by making some suggestions to optimize co-impacts work, through reference to other bodies of literature. The authors highlight that this article is situated within a dominant approach to climate mitigation policy work in developing countries, which implicitly places the non-climate benefits of any action as secondary to the primary benefit of climate change mitigation and constructs an artificial separation of policy formulation and implementation. Practitioners are encouraged to reflect on the implications of these considerations in future efforts.

Policy relevance

One of the primary challenges to advancing climate mitigation policy in developing countries is that of perceived relevance: near-term development priorities are overwhelming. Identifying, understanding and engaging with the co-impacts of mitigation actions has emerged as one way of addressing this challenge. Although still at an experimental phase, experience with co-impacts analysis in the MAPS countries provides some useful lessons in how to develop this area of work.     

How the future of the global forest sink depends on timber demand,forest management,and carbon policies

Deforestation has contributed significantly to net greenhouse gas emissions, but slowing deforestation, regrowing forests and other ecosystem processes have made forests a net sink. Deforestation will still influence future carbon fluxes, but the role of forest growth through aging, management, and other silvicultural inputs on future carbon fluxes are critically important but not always recognized by bookkeeping and integrated assessment models. When projecting the future, it is vital to capture how management processes affect carbon storage in ecosystems and wood products. This study uses multiple global forest sector models to project forest carbon impacts across 81 shared socioeconomic (SSP) and climate mitigation pathway scenarios. We illustrate the importance of modeling management decisions in existing forests in response to changing demands for land resources, wood products and carbon. Although the models vary in key attributes, there is general agreement across a majority of scenarios that the global forest sector could remain a carbon sink in the future, sequestering 1.2–5.8 GtCO2e/yr over the next century. Carbon fluxes in the baseline scenarios that exclude climate mitigation policy ranged from −0.8 to 4.9 GtCO2e/yr, highlighting the strong influence of SSPs on forest sector model estimates. Improved forest management can jointly increase carbon stocks and harvests without expanding forest area, suggesting that carbon fluxes from managed forests systems deserve more careful consideration by the climate policy community.     

Drivers of national climate policy

Patterns of national climate policy performance and their implications for the geopolitics of climate change are examined. An overview of levels of emissions performance across countries is first provided. Substantial changes in emissions trends over time are documented, notably with GHG emissions trajectories, which are shaped less and less by the developed/developing country divide. Various patterns of policy convergence and divergence in the types of policies states implement are then surveyed. Four broad types of explanation that may account for these trends are then explored: (1) variation in the institutional form of country-level governance regimes, (2) patterns of dependence on fossil fuel energy, (3) broad systemic differences among states (specifically in their population densities, carbon intensity, and per capita incomes, and (4) variations in the traditions of economic intervention by states. The article contributes to the growing body of work on comparative climate policy, and provides a first attempt at exploring the comparative politics of instrument choice. The analysis challenges the continued importance of a North–South divide for the future of climate policy, thus reinforcing a sense of the ‘new geopolitics’ of climate change. Some of the implications of the analysis for debates about the form of future international agreement on mitigation policy are also explored.

Policy relevance

The article contributes to the understanding of the variety of institutional conditions under which policy makers develop policy and thus the constraints and opportunities for the design of international agreements under these conditions.     

Carbon sequestration in agroforestry systems

Abstract

Management of trees in agroecosystems such as agroforestry, ethnoforests, and trees outside forests can mitigate green house gas (GHG) emissions under the Kyoto Protocol. Agroforestry systems are a better climate change mitigation option than oceanic, and other terrestrial options because of the secondary environmental benefits such as helping to attain food security and secure land tenure in developing countries, increasing farm income, restoring and maintaining above-ground and below-ground biodiversity, corridors between protected forests, as CH₄ sinks, maintaining watershed hydrology, and soil conservation. Agroforestry also mitigates the demand for wood and reduces pressure on natural forests. Promoting woodcarving industry facilitates long-term locking-up of carbon in carved wood and new sequestration through intensified tree growing. By making use of local knowledge, equity, livelihood security, trade and industry, can be supported. There is need to support development of suitable policies, assisted by robust country-wide scientific studies aimed at better understanding the potential of agroforestry and ethnoforestry for climate change mitigation and human well-being.     

The role of climate finance beyond renewables: demand-side management and carbon capture,usage and storage

Mobilizing climate finance for climate change mitigation is a crucial part of meeting the ‘well-below’ 2°C goal of the Paris Agreement. Climate finance refers to investments specifically in climate change mitigation and adaptation activities, which involve public finance and the leveraging of private finance. A large proportion of climate finance is Official Development Assistance (ODA) from OECD countries to ODA-eligible countries. The evidence shows that the largest proportion of climate finance for climate change mitigation has been channelled to the development of renewable energy, with a much smaller proportion flowing to other crucial forms of clean energy-related measures, such as demand-side management (DSM) (particularly sustainable cooling) and carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS). This forms the rationale and aim of this synthesis paper: to review the role of climate finance to develop clean energy beyond renewables. In doing so, the paper draws on practical policy and programme experiences of some donor countries, such as the UK, and Development Finance Institutions (DFIs). This paper argues that a greater amount of climate finance from OECD countries to ODA-eligible fossil fuel-intensive emerging economies and developing countries is required for sustainable cooling and CCUS, particularly in the form of technical assistance and clean energy innovation.

Key policy insights

• Demand-side management (DSM) and carbon capture, usage and storage (CCUS) are underfunded in climate finance compared with the promotion of renewables.

• Climate finance for sustainable cooling, in particular, represents just 0.04% of total ODA, despite cooling projected to represent 13% of global emissions by 2030.

• Public investment in CCUS is limited at US $28 billion since 2007, despite the costs of meeting the Paris Agreement estimated to be 40-128% more expensive without CCUS.

• Additional climate finance for these sectors should not come at the expense of funding for renewables but should be complementary to it.

     

Effects of Climate Change on Carbon Storage in Boreal Forests of China: A Local Perspective

The BIOME3 model was used to simulate the distribution patterns and carbon storage of the horizontal, zonal boreal forests in northeast and northwest China using a mapping system for vegetation patterns combined with carbon density estimates from vegetation and soils. The BIOME3 prediction is in reasonable good agreement with the potential distribution of Chinese boreal forests. The effects of changing atmospheric CO₂ concentration had a nonlinear effect on boreal forest distribution, with 3.5–10.8% reduced areas for both increasing and decreasing CO₂. In contrast, the increased climate together with and without changing CO₂ concentration showed dramatic changes in geographic patterns, with 70% reduction in area and disappearance of almost boreal forests in northeast China. The baseline carbon storage in boreal forests of China is 4.60 PgC (median estimate) based on the vegetation area of actual boreal forest distribution. If taking the large area of agricultural crops into account, the median value of potential carbon storage is 6.92 PgC. The increasing (340–500 ppmv) and decreasing CO₂ concentration (340–200 ppmv) led to decrease of carbon storage, 0.33 PgC and 1.01 PgC respectively compared to BIOME3 potential prediction under present climate and CO₂ conditions. Both climate change alone and climate change with CO₂ enrichment (340–500 ppmv) reduced largely the carbon stored in vegetation and soils by ca. 6.5 PgC. The effect of climate change is more significant than the direct physiological effect of CO₂ concentration on the boreal forests of China, showing a large reduction in both distribution area and carbon storage.     

Health co-benefits and the development of climate change mitigation policies in the European Union

The 2015 Paris Agreement requires increasingly ambitious emissions reduction efforts from its member countries. Accounting for ancillary positive health outcomes (health co-benefits) that result from implementing climate change mitigation policies can provide Parties to the Paris Agreement with a sound rationale for introducing stronger mitigation strategies. Despite this recognition, a knowledge gap exists on the role of health co-benefits in the development of climate change mitigation policies. To address this gap, the case study presented here investigates the role of health co-benefits in the development of European Union (EU) climate change mitigation policies through analysis and consideration of semi-structured interview data, government documents, journal articles and media releases. We find that while health co-benefits are an explicit consideration in the development of EU climate change mitigation policies, their influence on final policy outcomes has been limited. Our analysis suggests that whilst health co-benefits are a key driver of air pollution mitigation policies, climate mitigation policies are primarily driven by other factors, including economic costs and energy implications.

Key policy insights

• Health co-benefits are quantified and monetized as part of the development of EU climate change mitigation policies but their influence on the final policies agreed upon is limited.

• Barriers, such as the immediate economic costs associated with climate action, inhibit the influence of health co-benefits on the development of mitigation policies.

• Health co-benefits primarily drive the development of EU air pollution mitigation policies.

• The separation of responsibility for GHG and non-GHG emissions across Directorate Generals has decoupled climate change and air pollution mitigation policies, with consequences for the integration of health co-benefits in climate policy.

     

Integrating national forestry initiatives in India with international climate change policy

Policy initiatives in India, such as the Social Forestry Program and later the Joint Forest Management, were introduced for their co-benefits, including forest protection, employment opportunities, and added income for communities living in and around the forests. The evolution of these forest policies is critically reviewed. It is argued that India is perfectly positioned to benefit from climate change mitigation efforts, due to a rich, albeit chequered, history in forest management. National forestry policies are examined to assess how they can complement international climate change mitigation instruments, such as the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and the more recent Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD or REDD+ with conservation, sustainable management of forests, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks) and aid national sustainable development objectives. There is a need to heed the experiences from India's evolving forest policies, particularly those concerning land tenure and resource rights, which lack specificity within international mechanisms. The active engagement of rural communities must be integral to any programmes that make any claim to development and to environmental integrity as a whole.

Policy relevance

India's forestry programmes are examined for their effectiveness in informing international initiatives such as the CDM and REDD+. Forestry policies in India can evolve to complement international climate mitigation tools. By examining current and historical forest legislation, and their subsequent impacts, it is shown how communities can sustain their system of forest management and retain/obtain rights to land and resources under the CDM and REDD+. Looking for such synergies within existing national policies to implement newer international initiatives can greatly facilitate and increase the momentum of global environmental change.     

National ownership in the implementation of global climate policy in Uganda

Abstract

This article explores the history, from a developing country perspective, of how external interventions to implement global policies on the Climate Convention and the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have been integrated into national development policy frameworks in the period 1990–2005. The main question asked is to what extent external interventions have formed part of a country-driven approach in Uganda. The conflicting national and global priorities concerning the need for adaptation to the impacts of climate change versus the need for global mitigation of greenhouse gases (GHGs) are explored first. Against this background, Uganda's policy response to climate change is reviewed. National climate policies are found not to exist, and the implementation of global policies is not integrated into national policy frameworks, partly due to conflicting national and global priorities. Given limited national awareness and the fact that climate policy is marginal compared to other national interests in Uganda, the experiences with donor support for the implementation of global climate policy nationally are analysed. This article demonstrates that neither national policies nor national management of donor support have secured a country-driven approach to external interventions in Uganda.     

Consumption-based GHG emission accounting: a UK case study

Global GHG emissions continue to rise, with nearly a quarter of it due to trade that is not currently captured within global climate policy. In the context of current trade patterns and limited global cooperation on climate change, the feasibility of consumption-based emissions accounting to contribute to a more comprehensive (national) policy framework in the UK is investigated. Consumption-based emissions results for the UK from a range of models are presented, their technical robustness is assessed, and their potential application in national climate policy is examined using examples of policies designed to reduce carbon leakage and to address high levels of consumption. It is shown that there is a need to include consumption-based emissions as a complementary indicator to the current approach of measuring territorial emissions. Methods are shown to be robust enough to measure progress on climate change and develop and inform mitigation policy. Finally, some suggestions are made for future policy-oriented research in the area of consumption-based accounting that will facilitate its application to policy.

Policy relevance

Emissions embodied in trade are rapidly increasing and there is thus a growing gap between production emissions and the emissions associated with consumption. This is a growing concern due to the absence of a global cap and significant variation in country-level mitigation ambitions. Robust measurements of consumption-based emissions are possible and provide new insights into policy options. This includes trade-related policy (e.g. border carbon adjustments) and domestic policies (e.g. resource efficiency strategies). As climate policy targets deepen, there is a need for a broad range of policy options in addition to production and technological solutions. Consumption-based emissions are complementary to production-based emissions inventories, which are still the most accurate estimate for aggregated emissions at the global level. However, without consumption-based approaches, territorial emissions alone will not provide a complete picture of progress in regional and national emissions reduction.     

The transportation sector and low-carbon growth pathways: modelling urban,infrastructure, and spatial determinants of mobility

This article contributes to the controversial debate over the effect of spatial organization on CO₂ emissions by investigating the potential of infrastructure measures that favour lower mobility in achieving the transition to a low-carbon economy. The energy–economy–environment (E3) IMACLIM-R model is used to provide a detailed representation of passenger and freight transportation. Unlike many of the E3 models used to simulate mitigation options, IMACLIM-R represents both the technological and behavioural determinants of mobility. By comparing business-as-usual, carbon price only, and carbon price combined with transport policy scenarios, it is demonstrated that the measures that foster a modal shift towards low-carbon modes and a decoupling of mobility needs from economic activity significantly modify the sectoral distribution of mitigation efforts and reduce the level of carbon tax necessary to reach a given climate target relative to a ‘carbon price only’ policy.

Policy relevance

Curbing carbon emissions from transport activities is necessary in order to reach mitigation targets, but it poses a challenge for policy makers. The transport sector has two peculiarities: a weak ability to react to standard pricing measures (which encourages richer policy interventions) and a dependence on long-lived infrastructure (which imposes a delay between policy interventions and effective action). To address these problems, a framework is proposed for analysing the role of transport-specific measures adopted complementarily to carbon pricing in the context of international climate policies. Consideration is given to alternative approaches such as infrastructure measures designed to control mobility through less mobility-intensive denser agglomerations, investment reorientation towards public mode, and logistics reorganization towards less mobility-dependent production processes. Such measures can significantly reduce transport emissions in the long term and hence would moderate an increase in the carbon price and reduce its more important detrimental impacts on the economy.     

Policies for reducing agricultural sector vulnerability to climate change in Mali

Abstract

The Mali agricultural sector and the country's food security are potentially vulnerable to climate change. Policies may be able to mitigate some of the climate change vulnerability. This article investigates several policy changes that may reduce vulnerability, including climate-specific and other policies. The policy set includes migration of cropping patterns, development of high-temperature-resistant cultivars, reduction in soil productivity loss, cropland expansion, adoption of improved cultivars, and changes in trade patterns. When all policies are considered together, results under climate change show an annual gain of $252 million in economic benefits as opposed to a $161 million loss without policy adjustment. Simultaneously, undernourishment is reduced to 17% of the Malian population as compared with 64% without policy adjustment. We also find tradeoffs in cases between economic benefits and undernourishment. Policies are also studied individually and collectively. Overall, the results indicate that policy can play an important role in reducing climate change vulnerability in Mali.     

Using carbon finance to support climate policy objectives in high mountain ecosystems

Carbon markets and climate finance payments are being used to incentivize the mitigation of CO₂ arising from anthropogenic land-use change in forests, marine ecosystems, and lowland grasslands. However, no such consideration has been given to how these ‘carbon finance incentives’ might be applied to mountain grasslands and shrublands, ecosystems that contain a substantial amount of carbon. These incentives amount to more than US$350 billion per annum and could potentially support underfunded natural resource management (NRM) activities, which are urgently needed to address numerous stressors impacting these important ecosystems. In the mountain context, NRM activities could include adaptive grazing management, sustainable cropping, ecosystem preservation, ecosystem restoration, and engineered soil conservation measures. This article investigates the stressors, challenges, and priorities related to the NRM of carbon stocks in mountain grasslands and shrublands; why carbon markets and climate finance have not yet been utilized in this context; and, what is required to position mountain-based NRM activities as eligible for carbon finance incentives. Using surveys and interviews triangulated with a systematic literature review, the study found that carbon finance incentives are not well understood, both amongst mountain-focused experts and in the literature. The study also found the required technical methodologies, policy frameworks, and data to be largely undeveloped. This article proposes a top-down conceptual policy framework that can be used to develop key ‘enabling factors’ with the view of extending the eligibility of carbon markets and climate finance to NRM activities undertaken in mountain grasslands and shrublands in the same way that has been afforded to other ecosystems.

Policy relevance

This is the first study to explicitly highlight the important role that the mountain grasslands and shrublands might play in international climate policy, and how carbon finance mechanisms might support better NRM in these areas. It is also the first to investigate why these incentives have not been adopted thus far. The article concludes by proposing a novel top-down ‘carbon incentive enabling’ framework that could be driven by governments and mountain development focused organizations so as to capture some of the opportunities offered by carbon-based incentives, and help meet international climate policy objectives.     

Aligning climate action with the self-interest and short-term dominated priorities of decision-makers

The global and long-term nature of climate change conflicts with the self-interest and short-term dominated priorities of decision-makers. Climate change mitigation makes sense at the global level, but not at the level of the individual decision-maker. This conflict has been and remains the main obstacle to effective global cooperation and mitigation. This paper proposes a framework that aligns climate action with short-term self-interest through results-based payments to governments. Its key components are: determining an emission benchmark for each country as well as a price for carbon saving; paying countries annually for reducing emissions below their respective benchmark; a new international fund to finance these annual payments by borrowing capital from private investors; and repaying borrowings in the long-term through payments made by countries to the fund based on a pre-determined allocation mechanism. This framework would offer important benefits over an approach focused on allocating climate action or a carbon budget among countries. These include the improved prospect of reaching an effective climate agreement and delivering fast and dramatic mitigation thanks to stronger political commitment, the transformation of short-term self-interest from an obstacle into a driver of climate action, and the additional financing created. The paper also proposes a pilot scheme focusing on hydrofluorocarbon emissions with a considerably lower financing requirement. This offers the possibility of an alternative financing mechanism, and thus a faster and more straightforward implementation path. Short-term financial incentives offered to governments could turn policy action from a burden into an opportunity from their perspective unlocking a huge potential for timely mitigation.

Key policy insights

• A new international framework that offers short-term, results-based payments to governments to promote mitigation action could lead to much more effective global mitigation and international cooperation.

• The financing of such an approach could be solved through a novel financing structure, backed by the long-term commitments of participating countries and thus aligning the timeframe of the financial costs of mitigation with its climate benefits.

• The effectiveness of results-based payments and the concept behind this new approach could be proven through a pilot scheme focusing on hydrofluorocarbon emissions.

     

Public perception of climate engineering and carbon capture and storage in Germany: survey evidence

Climate engineering (CE) and carbon capture and storage are controversial options for addressing climate change. This study compares public perception in Germany of three specific measures: solar radiation management (SRM) via stratospheric sulphate injection, large-scale afforestation, and carbon capture and storage sub-seabed (CCS-S). In a survey experiment we find that afforestation is most readily accepted as a measure for addressing climate change, followed by CCS-S and lastly SRM, which is widely rejected. Providing additional information decreases acceptance for all measures, but their ranking remains unchanged. The acceptance of all three measures is especially influenced by the perceived seriousness of climate change and by trust in institutions. Also, respondents dislike the measures more if they perceive them as a way of shirking responsibility for emissions or as an unconscionable manipulation of nature. Women react more negatively to information than men, whereas the level of education or the degree of intuitive vs reflective decision making does not influence the reaction to information.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Current projections suggest that the use of climate engineering (CE) technologies or carbon capture and storage (CCS) is necessary if global warming is to be kept well below 2°C. Our article focuses on the perspective of the general public and thus supplements the dialogue between policymakers, interest groups, and scientists on how to address climate change. We show that in Germany public acceptance of potentially effective measures such as SRM or CCS-S is low and decreases even more when additional information is provided. This implies that lack of public acceptance may turn out to be a bottleneck for future implementation. Ongoing research and development in connection with CCS-S and SRM requires continuous communication with, and involvement of, the public in order to obtain feedback and assess the public’s reservations about the measures. The low level of acceptance also implies that emission reduction should remain a priority in climate policy.