China’s future emission reduction challenge and implications for global climate policy

In December 2015, China joined 190 plus nations at Paris in committing to the goal of limiting the rise in global average temperature to ‘well below’ 2°C. Carbon budget analysis indicates that goal will require not only that the European Union and US reduce their emissions by greater than 80% by 2050, but that China at least comes close to doing so as well, if any budget is to be left over for the rest of the world (RoW). Given that RoW emissions are, and will come from, low-income and emerging nations, China’s emission reduction potential is of no small consequence. In this paper, we use the Kaya identity to back out changes in the drivers of CO₂ emissions, including gross domestic product (GDP), energy intensity (E/GDP) and the carbon content of energy (C/E), the latter two calculated to be consistent with China’s long-term GDP growth rate forecasts and specified 2050 CO₂ emission reduction targets. Our results suggest that even achieving China’s highly optimistic renewable energy targets will be very far from sufficient to reduce China’s CO₂ emissions from 9.1?Gt it emitted in 2015 to much below 3?Gt by 2050. Even reducing its emissions to 5?Gt will be challenging, yet this falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its ‘well below’ 2°C commitment.

Key policy insights

• Under the Paris Agreement there is great pressure on China to very substantially reduce its emissions by 2050.

• While China has attached great importance to renewables and nuclear energy development, even achieving the most optimistic targets would not be sufficient to reduce China’s emissions from 9.1?Gt in 2015 to much below 3?Gt by 2050.

• China’s emission reduction potential falls far short of what is needed if the world is to meet its Paris ‘well below’ 2°C commitment, even if the EU and US reduce their emissions to zero by 2050.

• Emission cuts consistent with the Paris Agreement will require that China and the world give much greater weight to advancing research and development of scalable low-, zero- and negative-carbon sources and technologies.

     

Global climate policy and local energy politics: is India hiding behind the poor?

Along with the large middle-income countries Brazil, China, and South Africa, India has been put under increasing pressure to shoulder parts of the mitigation burden and commit to national emission reduction targets. India, however, refers to its limited capacity and widespread poverty. Is India hiding behind its poor? While others examine the distribution of emissions within the country to answer this question, we study domestic policy making for energy subsidies and access to clean energy. Empirical evidence suggests that domestic policy making is at least partially consistent with the pro-poor arguments advanced at the international level. Given their large number and the country's democratic system, the poor do have some weight in Indian politics. However, pro-poor policies end where they do not translate into greater vote shares. Moreover, India's international position ignores the existing complementarities between climate-friendly and pro-poor activities.

Policy relevance

Despite India's recent growth spurt, its concern to fight energy poverty at home before engaging in any commitments on climate policy at the international level should be taken seriously within the international negotiations. Policy making in India is driven by democratic incentives, which, in this case, work to the benefit of the poor. Pro-poor policies may not go as far as one would wish from a developmental perspective, but the impact of the masses of the poor on domestic policy making is politically significant and cannot be ignored. This also provides some broader lessons for mitigation and adaptation policies in developing countries: politicians respond to incentives and support will only reach the needy if the appropriate incentives are in place. While we observe some significant commitment and implementation problems even in a democratic country like India, such problems must be expected to be even more serious elsewhere. This should not be overlooked when designing institutions for the allocation of climate finance, such as the Green Climate Fund.     

Distributive justice in global climate finance – Recipients’ climate vulnerability and the allocation of climate funds

The ‘climate justice’ lens is increasingly being used in framing discussions and debates on global climate finance. A variant of such justice – distributive justice – emphasises recipient countries’ vulnerability to be an important consideration in funding allocation. The extent to which this principle is pursued in practice has been of widespread and ongoing concerns. Empirical evidence in this regard however remains inadequate and methodologically weak. This research examined the effect of recipients’ climate vulnerability on the allocation of climate funds by controlling for other commonly-identified determinants. A dynamic panel regression method based on Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) was used on a longitudinal dataset, containing approved funds for more than 100,000 projects covering three areas of climate action (mitigation, adaptation, and overlap) in 133 countries over two decades (2000–2018). Findings indicated a non-significant effect of recipients’ vulnerability on mitigation funding, but significant positive effects on adaptation and overlap fundings. ‘Most vulnerable’ countries were likely to receive higher amounts of these two types of funding than the ‘least vulnerable’ countries. All these provided evidence of distributive justice. However, the relationship between vulnerability and funding was parabolic, suggesting ‘moderately vulnerable’ countries likely to receive more funding than the ‘most vulnerable’ countries. Whilst, for mitigation funding, this observation was not a reason for concern, for adaptation and overlap fundings this was not in complete harmony with distributive justice. Paradoxically, countries with better investment readiness were likely to receive more adaptation and overlap funds. In discordance with distributive justice, countries within the Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia regions, despite their higher climatic vulnerabilities, were likely to receive significantly less adaptation and overlap fundings. Effects of vulnerability were persistent, and past funding had significant effects on current funding. These, coupled with the impact of readiness, suggested a probable Low Funding Trap for the world’s most vulnerable countries. The overarching conclusion is that, although positive changes have occurred since the 2015 Paris Agreement, considerable challenges to distributive justice remain. Significant data and methodological challenges encountered in the research and their implications are also discussed.     

AMO’s structure and climate footprint in observations and IPCC AR5 climate simulations

This study aims to characterize the spatiotemporal features of the low frequency Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO), its oceanic and atmospheric footprint and its associated hydroclimate impact. To accomplish this, we compare and evaluate the representation of AMO-related features both in observations and in historical simulations of the twentieth century climate from models participating in the IPCC’s CMIP5 project. Climate models from international leading research institutions are chosen: CCSM4, GFDL-CM3, UKMO-HadCM3 and ECHAM6/MPI-ESM-LR. Each model employed includes at least three and as many as nine ensemble members. Our analysis suggests that the four models underestimate the characteristic period of the AMO, as well as its temporal variability; this is associated with an underestimation/overestimation of spectral peaks in the 70–80 year/10–20 year range. The four models manifest the mid-latitude focus of the AMO-related SST anomalies, as well as certain features of its subsurface heat content signal. However, they are limited when it comes to simulating some of the key oceanic and atmospheric footprints of the phenomenon, such as its signature on subsurface salinity, oceanic heat content and geopotential height anomalies. Thus, it is not surprising that the models are unable to capture the majority of the associated hydroclimate impact on the neighboring continents, including underestimation of the surface warming that is linked to the positive phase of the AMO and is critical for the models to be trusted on projections of future climate and decadal predictions.     

Landscape for change? International climate policy and energy transitions: evidence from sub-Saharan Africa

What is the role of the climate regime in facilitating rapid decarbonization of the world’s energy systems? We examine how core assumptions concerning the roles of the nation state, carbon markets and finance and technology in international climate policy are being challenged by the realities of how transitions in the energy systems are unfolding. Drawing on the critical region of sub-Saharan Africa, we examine the potential for international climate policy to foster new trajectories towards decarbonization.

Policy relevance

The international regime for climate policy has been in place for some twenty years. Despite significant changes in the landscape of energy systems and drivers of global GHG emissions over this time, the core principles and tools remain relatively stable – national governments, carbon markets, project-based climate finance and the transfer of technological hardware. Given the diversity of actors and drivers and the limited direct reach and influence of international climate policy, however, there is an urgent need to consider how the climate regime can best support the embryonic transitions that are slowly taking form around the world. To do this effectively requires a more nuanced understanding of the role of the state in governing these transitions beyond the notion of a cohesive state serving as rule-enforcer and transition manager. It also requires a broader view of technology, not just as hardware that is transferred, but as a set of practices and networks of expertise and enabling actors. Likewise, though markets have an important role to play as vehicles for achieving broader ends, they are not an end in themselves. Finally on finance, while acknowledging the important role of climate aid, often as a multiplier or facilitator of more ambitious private flows, it is critical to differentiate between the types of finance required for different transitions, many of which will not be counted under, or directed by, the climate regime. In sum, the (low-) carbon economy is being built in ways and in numerous sites that the climate regime needs to be cognizant of and engage with productively, and this may require fundamental reconsideration of the building blocks of the international climate regime.     

Options for differentiation of future commitments in climate policy: how to realise timely participation to meet stringent climate goals?

Abstract

This paper aims at exploring options for differentiation of future commitments in global greenhouse gas emissions control, linked to climate targets. This is done on the basis of theEUtarget of a maximum global temperature increase of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. The Framework to Assess International Regimes for the differentiation of commitments (FAIR) is used to explore the implications of two possible climate regimes: (1) increasing participation (i.e. a gradual increase in the number of parties involved and their level of commitment according to participation and differentiation rules) and (2) ‘contraction and convergence’ (C&C) with universal participation and a convergence of per capita emission permits. It is found that in a regime of increasing participation, stabilising the CO₂ concentration at 450 ppmv by 2100 requires participation of major developing countries before 2050 in global emission control, irrespective of the participation and differentiation rules chosen. In the case of stringent climate targets, a convergence regime seems to provide more incentives for a timely participation of developing countries, and opportunities for an effective and efficient regime for controlling global emissions than increasing participation.     

Options for differentiation of future commitments in climate policy: how to realise timely participation to meet stringent climate goals?

This paper aims at exploring options for differentiation of future commitments in global greenhouse gas emissions control, linked to climate targets. This is done on the basis of the EU target of a maximum global temperature increase of 2°C compared to pre-industrial levels. The Framework to Assess International Regimes for the differentiation of commitments (FAIR) is used to explore the implications of two possible climate regimes: (1) increasing participation (i.e. a gradual increase in the number of parties involved and their level of commitment according to participation and differentiation rules) and (2) ‘contraction and convergence’ (C&C) with universal participation and a convergence of per capita emission permits. It is found that in a regime of increasing participation, stabilising the CO₂ concentration at 450 ppmv by 2100 requires participation of major developing countries before 2050 in global emission control, irrespective of the participation and differentiation rules chosen. In the case of stringent climate targets, a convergence regime seems to provide more incentives for a timely participation of developing countries, and opportunities for an effective and efficient regime for controlling global emissions than increasing participation.     

Analysis and farmers’ perception of climate change in the Kashmir Valley,India

Theoretical and Applied Climatology - Analysis of climatic variables is important for the detection and attribution of climate change trends and has received considerable attention from researchers...     

Farmers’ climate change beliefs and adaptation strategies for a water scarce future in Australia

Climate change is likely to require irrigators in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin to cope with less water, which will require ongoing farm adjustment. Possible incremental adjustment strategies include expansive and accommodating responses, such as irrigators buying land and water, increasing their irrigated area, changing crop mix and adopting efficient infrastructure. Contractive strategies include selling land and water, and decreasing their irrigated area. Using historical surveys we provide a comparison of irrigators’ planned and actual strategies over the past fifteen years, thereby offering a strong foundation to support analysing future adaptation strategies. We explore influences associated with farm adjustment strategies, and in particular the role that climate change beliefs play. Farmers convinced that climate change is occurring are more likely to plan accommodating, but not expansive, strategies. The relationship between climate change belief and adopting various adaptive strategies was found to be often endogenous, especially for accommodating strategies. Such results suggest the need for irrigation farming policies to be targeted at improving irrigators’ adaptability to manage water variability, and its link with farm future viability.     

No regrets?: Economy and environment in Australia's domestic climate change policy process

This paper explores Australia's domestic response to the issue of climate change, and charts the evolution of ‘no-regrets’ as the guiding principle for policy development. The concept of no-regrets encapsulates the ecologically modern idea that addressing environmental problems can bring economic, as well as social and environmental, benefits. It is argued that the degree of reconciliation between environmental and economic objectives achieved has been made possible through a progressive narrowing of the scales over which costs and benefits are weighed, and the exclusion of the non-material benefits of the environment. Tensions between addressing climate change and continuing business as usual, which are far from unique to Australia, remain and continue to limit effective reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.     

Implications of Japan’s long term climate mitigation target and the relevance of uncertain nuclear policy

Achieving long-term climate mitigation goals in Japan faces several challenges, starting with the uncertain nuclear power policy after the 2011 earthquake, the uncertain availability and progress of energy technologies, as well as energy security concerns in light of a high dependency on fuel imports. The combined weight of these challenges needs to be clarified in terms of the energy system and macroeconomic impacts. We applied a general equilibrium energy economic model to assess these impacts on an 80% emission reduction target by 2050 considering several alternative scenarios for nuclear power deployment, technology availability, end use energy efficiency, and the price of fossil fuels. We found that achieving the mitigation target was feasible for all scenarios, with considerable reductions in total energy consumption (39%–50%), higher shares of low-carbon sources (43%–72% compared to 15%), and larger shares of electricity in the final energy supply (51%–58% compared to 42%). The economic impacts of limiting nuclear power by 2050 (3.5% GDP loss) were small compared to the lack of carbon capture and storage (CCS) (6.4% GDP loss). Mitigation scenarios led to an improvement in energy security indicators (trade dependency and diversity of primary energy sources) even in the absence of nuclear power. Moreover, preliminary analysis indicates that expanding the range of renewable energy resources can lower the macroeconomic impacts of the long term target considerably, and thus further in depth analysis is needed on this aspect.

Key policy insights

• For Japan, an emissions reduction target of 80% by 2050 is feasible without nuclear power or CCS.

• The macroeconomic impact of such a 2050 target was largest without CCS, and smallest without nuclear power.

• Energy security indicators improved in mitigation scenarios compared to the baseline.

     

Is hope good for motivating collective action in the context of climate change? Differentiating hope’s emotion- and problem-focused coping functions

Climate change may be the most fundamental collective action problem of all time. To solve it through collective action, collective motivation is required. Yet, given the complexity and scale of the collective problem, it may be difficult for individuals to experience such motivation. Intriguingly, the experience of hope may increase collective motivation and action. We offer an integrative coping perspective on hope and collective action in the context of climate change. It explains how hope stimulates individuals’ collective motivation to act against climate change (serving a problem-focused coping function), or fails to do so (serving an emotion-focused coping function). Testing these competing hypotheses, we conducted three studies that experimentally manipulated a core antecedent of hope (i.e., the perceived possibility of change) among US participants (total N = 1020). Across the board, this manipulation increased individuals’ hope but not their collective motivation and action. Furthermore, collective motivation predicted collective action intentions across all three studies. Hoping thus seems to serve an emotion-focused coping function and hence may not increase the collective motivation required for collective action in the context of climate change.     

Spatial and temporal variation in climate change: a bird’s eye view

Recent changes in global climate have dramatically altered worldwide temperatures and the corresponding timing of seasonal climate conditions. Recognizing the degree to which species respond to changing climates is therefore an area of increasing conservation concern as species that are unable to respond face increased risk of extinction. Here we examine spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the rate of climate change across western North America and discuss the potential for conditions to arise that may limit the ability of western migratory birds to adapt to changing climates. Based on 52 years of climate data, we show that changes in temperature and precipitation differ significantly between spring migration habitats in the desert southwest and breeding habitats throughout western North America. Such differences may ultimately increase costs to individual birds and thereby threaten the long-term population viability of many species.     

Unravelling the United Kingdom’s climate policy consensus: The power of ideas,discourse and institutions

As climate change policies and governance initiatives struggle to produce the transformational social changes required, the search for stand out case studies continues. Many have pointed to the period between 2005 and 2008 in the United Kingdom as a promising example of national level innovation. With strong cross-party consensus and a first-of-its-kind legislation the UK established itself as a climate policy leader. However, early warning signs suggest that this institutionalised position is far from secure. Through a novel application of discursive institutionalism this article presents a detailed analysis of the role of ideas in unravelling this ambition under the Conservative-Liberal coalition administration (2010–2015). Discursive interactions among policymakers and other political actors were dominated by ideas about governmental responsibility and economic austerity, establishing an atmosphere of climate policy scepticism and restraint. By situating this conspicuous and influential process of bricolage within its institutional context the importance of how policymakers think and communicate about climate change is made apparent. The power of ideas to influence policy is further demonstrated through their cognitive and normative persuasiveness, by imposing over and excluding alternatives and in their institutional positioning. It can be concluded that despite innovative legislation, institution building and strategic coordination of different types of governance actors the ideational foundations of ambitious climate change politics in the UK have been undermined.     

What information do policy makers need to develop climate adaptation plans for smallholder farmers? The case of Central America and Mexico

Scientific and technical information can increase the ability of policy makers to make strategic decisions. However, climate change policy is often formulated without significant input from science. We examine whether the availability and accessibility of information related to climate change is a major barrier for policy action on climate change adaptation for smallholder farmers. We also investigate whether scientific information related to climate change is available and used in policy making in Central America and Mexico. Our online survey of 105 decision makers indicated that a lack of scientific and technical information hinders policy makers from developing policies to help smallholder farmers adapt to climate change. Specific needs include information on the impacts of climate change on water availability for agriculture and the areas that are or will be prone to flooding, droughts or landslides. Information about the location of the farmers who are most vulnerable to climate change, the projected temperature and precipitation in agricultural areas and the expected impacts of climate change on crop yields or animal productivity, is also needed. Despite high interest in having scientific information guide policy making, many respondents indicated that policy makers rarely use this information in adaptation planning. In addition to ensuring that relevant information is available to inform policy making, technical and scientific information must be published in venues that are readily accessible for policy makers, easy to understand, and written in a format that is policy-relevant. It is also critical that scientific articles provide specific recommendations for achieving desired policy outcomes.     

Is there a common pattern of future gas-phase air pollution in Europe under diverse climate change scenarios?

Climate change alone influences future levels of tropospheric ozone and their precursors through modifications of gas-phase chemistry, transport, removal, and natural emissions. The goal of this study is to determine at what extent the modes of variability of gas-phase pollutants respond to different climate change scenarios over Europe. The methodology includes the use of the regional modeling system MM5 (regional climate model version)-CHIMERE for a target domain covering Europe. Two full-transient simulations covering from 1991–2050 under the SRES A2 and B2 scenarios driven by ECHO-G global circulation model have been compared. The results indicate that the spatial patterns of variability for tropospheric ozone are similar for both scenarios, but the magnitude of the change signal significantly differs for A2 and B2. The 1991–2050 simulations share common characteristics for their chemical behavior. As observed from the NO₂ and α-pinene modes of variability, our simulations suggest that the enhanced ozone chemical activity is driven by a number of parameters, such as the warming-induced increase in biogenic emissions and, to a lesser extent, by the variation in nitrogen dioxide levels. For gas-phase pollutants, the general increasing trend for ozone found under A2 and B2 forcing is due to a multiplicity of climate factors, such as increased temperature, decreased wet removal associated with an overall decrease of precipitation in southern Europe, increased photolysis of primary and secondary pollutants as a consequence of lower cloudiness and increased biogenic emissions fueled by higher temperatures.     

Seizing policy windows: Policy Influence of climate advocacy coalitions in Brazil,China, and India, 2000–2015

What drives the development of climate policy? Brazil, China, and India have all changed their climate policies since 2000, and single-case analyses of climate policymaking have found that all three countries have had climate coalitions working to promote climate policies. To what extent have such advocacy coalitions been able to influence national policies for climate-change mitigation, and what can explain this? Employing a new approach that combines the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) with insights from comparative environmental politics and the literature on policy windows, this paper identifies why external parameters like political economy and institutional structures are crucial for explaining the climate advocacy coalitions’ ability to seize policy windows and influence policy development. We find that the coalitions adjust their policy strategies to the influence-opportunity structures in each political context—resulting in confrontation in Brazil, cooperation in China, and a complementary role in India.     

The ‘co’ in co-production of climate action: Challenging boundaries within and between science,policy and practice

Effective action taken against climate change must find ways to unite scientific and practice-based knowledges associated with the various stakeholders who see themselves as invested in the global delivery of climate governance. Political decision-makers, climate scientists and practitioners approach this challenge from what are often radically different perspectives and experiences. While considerable work has been done to develop the idea of ‘co-production’ in the development of climate action outputs, questions remain over how to best unite the contrasting epistemological traditions and norms associated with different stakeholders. Drawing on the existing literatures on climate action co-production and from translational perspectives on the science-policy interface, in this paper we develop the concept of ‘boundary agency’. Defining this as the agency ‘possessed’ when willing and able to translate between different epistemological communities invested in a similar policy and governance challenge such as climate change, we offer it as a useful means to reflect on participants’ understanding of the ‘co’ in co-production. This is in contrast to the more established (often academic-led) focus on what it is that is being produced by co-production processes. We draw from two complementary empirical studies, which explicitly encouraged i) engagement and ii) reflection on cross-boundary co-production between climate action stakeholders from different backgrounds. Reflecting on the two studies, we discuss the benefits of (and barriers to) encouraging more active and sustained engagement between climate action stakeholders so as to try to actively blur the boundaries between science and policy and, in doing so, invent new epistemological communities of practice.