Adapting global shared socio-economic pathways for national scenarios in Japan

He Chen,Shinichiro Fujimori,Keita Honjo,Kei Gomi,Keisuke Matsuhashi,Kiyoshi Takahashi

doi:10.1007/s11625-019-00780-y

Abstract

Shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) are alternative global development scenarios focused on the mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. However, global SSPs would need revised versions for regional or local assessment, which is the so-called extended version, because global narratives may lack region-specific important drivers, national policy perspectives, and unification of data for each nation. Thus, it is necessary to construct scenarios that can be used for governments in response to the SSPs to reflect national and sub-national unique situations. This study presents national SSP scenarios, specifically focusing on Japan (hereafter, Japan SSPs), as well as a process for developing scenarios that qualitatively links to global SSPs. We document the descriptions of drivers and basic narratives of Japan SSPs coherent with global SSPs, based on workshops conducted by local researchers and governments. Moreover, we provide a common data set of population and GDP using the national scale. Japan SSPs emphasized population trends different from global SSPs and influencing factors, citizen participation, industrial development resulting from economic change, distribution, and inequality of sub-national population, among others. We selected data sets from existing population projections that have been widely used by Japanese researchers; the data show that the population and GDP of Japan SSPs are expected to be about 20–25% less than global SSPs by 2100.

Highlights

This study presents a new process for narratives of scenario development that qualitatively links to global shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) and basic quantitative information of Japan
The descriptions of the basic narratives were organized as sketch and tables
This study describes Japanese SSPs in the global context and provides a common methodology based on local use and development for governments and researchers, as well as a common data set for climate change mitigation and adaptation measures

Summary

Introduction

Sustainability Science (2020) 15:985–1000 integrated assessment models, simulations with climate models, evaluating the impacts and adaptations of climate change, and assessment of global socioeconomic scenarios development, have been carried out vigorously (Riahi et al 2017; IPCC 2000; van Vuuren et al 2011). Among these efforts, the initial representative effort is the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (hereinafter referred to as “SRES”), which the intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) announced in 2000 (IPCC 2000). Climate models (earth system models) generated future climate scenarios based on the RCPs under CMIP5 (Coupled Model Intercomparison Project) exercise (Taylor et al 2012); shared socio-economic pathways (SSPs) have been simultaneously developed (Riahi et al 2017)

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Results

Conclusion