Climate Policymaking Research Articles

Stochastic resonance in climate reddening increases the risk of cyclic ecosystem extinction via phase-tipping.

Human activity is leading to changes in the mean and variability of climatic parameters in most locations around the world. The changing mean has received considerable attention from scientists and climate policy makers. However, recent work indicates that the changing variability, that is, the amplitude and the temporal autocorrelation of deviations from the mean, may have greater and more imminent impact on ecosystems. In this paper, we demonstrate that changes in climate variability alone could drive cyclic predator-prey ecosystems to extinction via so-called phase-tipping (P-tipping), a new type of instability that occurs only from certain phases of the predator-prey cycle. We construct a mathematical model of a variable climate and couple it to two self-oscillating paradigmatic predator-prey models. Most importantly, we combine realistic parameter values for the Canada lynx and snowshoe hare with actual climate data from the boreal forest. In this way, we demonstrate that critically important species in the boreal forest have increased likelihood of P-tipping to extinction under predicted changes in climate variability, and are most vulnerable during stages of the cycle when the predator population is near its maximum. Furthermore, our analysis reveals that stochastic resonance is the underlying mechanism for the increased likelihood of P-tipping to extinction.

A review of the IPCC Sixth Assessment and implications for tourism development and sectoral climate action

The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change represents the state of knowledge of anthropogenic disruption to the climate system, its diverse ecosystem and societal impacts, and the imperative for and challenges of mitigation and adaptation responses. It is foundational for global climate policymaking. This paper examines the place of tourism in AR6 and reviews its key findings for tourism’s future. Overall, tourism related content declined relative to previous assessments. While notable improvements in content occurred for Africa, visible knowledge gaps remain in the tourism growth regions of South America, Middle East, and South Asia. There remains limited discussion of many impacts, and very limited understanding of integrated impacts and the effectiveness of adaptation strategies at the destination scale. The contribution of tourism to global emissions was omitted, however tourism was discussed in the context of luxury emissions and just transitions. Tourism is repeatedly identified in solution space discussions, particularly for ecosystem protection, but without consideration of the future of tourism in a rapidly decarbonizing and climate disrupted economy. With only 21% of published climate change and tourism literature in the AR6 review period cited, tourism academics should elevate tourism content and engagement in future assessments.

Opening up New Geographical Ontologies around Adapting to Climate Change.

Opening up regional ontologies for climate action is a necessary and underexplored dimension of climate change policymaking. This commentary explores how a regional lens might be integrated into the complex mosaic of climate governance, particularly in the context of resilient regions. I argue regional ontologies for climate policymaking could have greater analytical power if integrated into a theoretical framing of action that goes beyond the nation-state, beyond formal policy processes and beyond a strict binary between science and policy. Applying this lens to resilient regions, I argue there are particular opportunities at the regional scale for highlighting diverse perspectives or adaptation issues obscured through a national ontology, using existing transnational data infrastructure and community-led data systems to support the regional ontology and reframing the scale of collective future visions for a climate-adapted world.

Activating an evidence-based identity increases the impact of evidence on policymaker beliefs about local climate policies

Evidence-based policymaking has the potential to improve the efficiency and impact of climate mitigation and adaptation policies, but that promise cannot be fulfilled if policymakers fail to change their minds (update their beliefs) when presented with new evidence. Research suggests that individuals often resist changing their mind, especially on polarized topics like climate action. Here we explore whether an ‘evidence-based policymaker’ intervention can reduce resistance when policymakers interpret new information. We hypothesize that, if policymakers wish to see themselves as ‘evidence-based’, reminding them of that identity can make changing their beliefs more comfortable. This is because belief-updating provides an opportunity to affirm their identity as an evidence-based policymaker. In two survey studies of state and local U.S. policymakers—a neutral policy pilot (n = 152) and a polarizing climate policy experiment (n = 356)—we show that the intervention was effective, even when evidence was incompatible with prior policy beliefs or party ideology. This finding suggests that making evidence-based identities salient when presenting new evidence could increase that information’s impact on climate policymaking.

Institutions for effective climate policymaking: Lessons from the case of the United Kingdom

The United Kingdom (UK) is home to one of the most ambitious climate policy regimes in the world, centred around the 2008 Climate Change Act (CCA), the first strategic climate legislation of its kind. Building on prior studies of the CCA while highlighting Germany as a counterfactual case study, we demonstrate the significant positive role that strategic framework legislation can play in improving climate policy integration and coherence. We further show that important new institutions can be established under the right historical conditions. Specifically, we argue that the political weakening of the UK coal sector was a necessary precursor to the adoption of strong climate policy and the emergence of a structural consensus towards accelerating climate ambition, as compared with Germany where consolidation of the coal regime has been a major factor in the country's failure to meet its emissions targets. We show how business associations and labour groups in the UK were a key supportive coalition for early climate action, while in Germany industry and organized labour have been key actors obstructing and delaying the passage of pro-climate reforms. Our study raises questions about the prospects for energy transitions that are both just and rapid, particularly by discussing the trade-offs between cost-effectiveness, speed, and distributional concerns.

Climate policy in British Columbia: An unexpected journey

Since introducing a path-breaking carbon tax in 2008, the western Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) has attracted significant attention from climate policy scholars. The enactment of its carbon tax has made the case of BC intriguing, as Canada is a poor climate performer, BC is a fossil fuel producer, and carbon taxes are politically challenging to introduce anywhere. This paper discusses the BC tax, and what lessons it holds for other jurisdictions. We complement existing accounts with new details about key events and developments in recent years, and about climate policymaking in BC generally. While there are features of the tax's design and promotion that would be worth replicating elsewhere, we argue its survival reflects some simple good fortune. Moreover, the case of BC should not be reduced to its tax, as the province has enacted other notable climate policies, some of which have done more to reduce emissions while attracting less public criticism.

Effects of COVID-19 on civil society voices in European energy and climate policy

Civil society plays an important role in European energy and climate policymaking. This paper poses the questions of how organized civil society handled the opportunities and challenges presented by the lockdown to its access to the climate and energy policymaking within the European Commission (EC)? How has the balance between organized civil society groups and businesses in Europe been affected by pandemic-related travel restrictions? Moreover, what role has the EC played in creating such opportunities and affecting the legitimacy of democratic policymaking? This research sheds light on the changing role of the EC in democratic governance and policy formation in the European Union (EU) by examining the relationship between funding received by CSOs active in the policy areas of environment and climate, the number of meetings attended, and the importance of coalitions and networks. This research revealed a possible relationship between level of participation in policymaking and the operational support received from the EC. Despite the resources invested, opportunities for interest representation in the energy and climate policy areas disproportionately favor businesses and organizations with long-term relationships with and proximity to Brussels. Increased number of virtual meetings only marginally increased share of participation of NGOs in these meetings. Thus, a physical presence in Brussels and resource investment remain important factors in access to the EU policymaking.

Article: The Hague District Court’s Judgment in the ‘Climate Case of the Century’: How a Dutch Court Fell Through the Cellar Hatch (Part 1)

To protect the inhabitants of The Netherlands against ‘dangerous climate change’, the Hague District Court (the ‘Court’) in the ‘climate case of the century’ (Milieudefensie v. Shell, 2021) resorted to paradoxical lex ferenda interpretations of Dutch tort law. The court found binding ‘unwritten’ corporate norms in documentation without any legal status, while it acknowledged that the corresponding multitude of demanding ‘written’ (i.e., statutory) norms are nonbinding, do not apply to private entities, and do not reflect custom. In dictating corporate climate policymaking, the court rewrote Dutch tort law, ignored its limits, and expanded it in ways that are not consistent with the Dutch Supreme Court’s rulings. Based on the proposition that CO2 emissions cause ‘dangerous’ climate change, which is not a term used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the judgment is a lengthy, but in the end circular argument: there is a duty of care because emission cause danger, and emissions cause danger because there is a duty of care. Milieudefensie’s case was built chiefly on a Dutch tort law case known as the ‘Cellar Hatch’ case. In the Cellar Hatch case, the Dutch Supreme Court first articulated the endangerment doctrine that resembles Learned Hand’s negligence calculus. In Milieudefensie v. Shell, the Hague District Court applied the endangerment doctrine, but constructed a climatespecific version. To enforce the urgent CO2 emission reductions deemed scientifically necessary, the Court circumvented the logical consequences of the applying the Cellar Hatch’s endangerment doctrine by referring to human rights, consensus and the concept of ‘partial responsibility’. The judgment does not fit into the system of Dutch civil law, and reasons away all barriers to imposition of the remedy sought by Milieudefensie, including causation requirements. With the Court’s moral reconstruction of the endangerment doctrine to ‘save the planet’, the Court opened the hatch, and fell into the dark cellar, along with the entire body of Dutch tort law, democracy, the rule of law, the rights and interests of citizens and the economy. In short, based on court-made ‘unwritten’ law, the Court concocted a result-oriented mix of science, law and expanded ‘soft laws’ to find an unlawful act without duly considering its plausible lawfulness and justification, entertained a vague, multi-faceted concept of climate-related damage without carefully examining its coherence, and constructed a causal link between the act and the damage based on the act’s presumed unlawfulness. Ironically, given the way markets work, the court’s judgment may well increase CO2 emissions, and thus not have any favourable effect on the climate, but it will restrict citizen’s rights to participate in public affairs and impose a potentially large burden on the economy. Endorsing perceived consensus around a moral imperative to reduce emissions, the Court did not confirm, but merely assumed the effectiveness of the remedy and ignored its multiple adverse consequences. The reality is that to comply with the court order, in 2030, Shell could simply spin off its fossil fuel business. Regrettably, the court disposed of virtually the complete body of Dutch law to secure a pyrrhic victory for the climate movement that is likely to harm the environment. This article is published in two parts. This is part 1. Part 2 will be published in the next issue of European Energy and Environmental Law Review. Milieudefensie v. Shell, climate change, climate litigation, civil liability, tort law, customary law, duty of care, causation, public-private law interface, concept of damage, trias politica, interest balancing, legal culture

Measuring Impact of Climate Change on Indigenous Health in the Background of Multiple Disadvantages: A Scoping Review for Equitable Public Health Policy Formulation.

How climate change is uniquely affecting Indigenous health remains a very less explored area in the existing research literature. The imperative of inclusive climate action to protect indigenous health multiplies manifolds due to their unique vulnerabilities owing to predominant dependence on natural resources and multiple disadvantages faced. The current article attempted to add to the evidence pool regarding climate change impacts on the indigenous population by systematically collecting, processing, and interpreting data as a scoping literature review for effective and inclusive climate policymaking. Twenty-Nine articles of varied study designs were identified employing a systematically organized search strategy using PubMed (Field, MeSH, and advanced search) and Google scholar; relevant data were extracted for further analysis. The Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR) guidelines were followed. Changing climate scenarios had both direct and indirect health-related impacts on indigenous health, and altered the epidemiological triad for various health-related events, causing the emergence and re-emergence of infectious diseases, and increased prevalence of chronic diseases and mental disorders. An expanded framework was developed showcasing the variability of climate change events, multiple disadvantages, and its impacts on indigenous populations. Few studies also reported a wide range of adaptation responses of indigenous peoples towards climate change. It was substantiated that any climate-change mitigation policy must take into account the trials and tribulations of indigenous communities. Also, due to the complexity and large variability of the impacts and differences in mitigation capabilities, policies should be contextualized locally and tailored to meet the climate need of the indigenous community.

Opportunities beyond CO2 for climate mitigation

Opportunities beyond CO2 for climate mitigation

Long-term projection of future climate change over the twenty-first century in the Sahara region in Africa under four Shared Socio-Economic Pathways scenarios.

Climate change affects air quality and people's health. Therefore, accurate prediction of future climate change is of great significance for human beings to better adapt and mitigate climate change. Using the projection simulation dataset of the CMIP6 multi-model ensemble, the future climate change in the Sahara region under the four scenarios (SSP1-2.6, SSP2-4.5, SSP3-7.0, and SSP5-8.5) is analyzed. The results show that annual and seasonal average surface air temperature in the Sahara region will continue to rise throughout the twenty-first century relative to the baseline period 1995-2014 if greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations continue increasing. Under the four SSPs scenarios, the warming in the Sahara region will be more pronounced than in the whole world through the twenty-first century. The annual maximum temperature (TX), the annual minimum temperature (TN), the annual count of days with maximum temperature above 35°C (TX 35), and the annual count of days with maximum temperature above 40°C (TX 40) in the Sahara region will continue to increase until the end of the twenty-first century under the four scenarios. The results of climate change prediction can provide scientific reference for climate policy-making.

Resistance of grassland productivity to hydroclimatic changes in the Tibetan Plateau

An increasing trend of hydroclimatic disturbances, such as droughts, which are projected to become more frequent and intense with global warming and climate change. Droughts adversely affect the structure and function of terrestrial ecosystems, damage vegetation growth, and even increase mortality. In this study, we assess the drought resistance (Rd) of ecosystems in the Tibetan Plateau. Ecosystem water use efficiency (WUE) was used as an indicator of change in carbon and water cycles, and then ecosystem resistance in terms of change in WUE in drought years was analyzed. Our results suggested that the WUE in the Tibetan Plateau exhibited significant spatial heterogeneity and drastically reduced under dry and cool conditions. The evaluation of ecosystem drought resistance indicated that the grassland in most areas of the Tibetan Plateau is resistant to hydroclimatic fluctuations. In particular, the grassland ecosystem in areas with lower temperatures or higher precipitation exhibited greater drought resistance. Our results facilitate the identification of drought-vulnerable areas in the Tibetan Plateau to inform grassland ecosystem management and climate policy-making and sustain ecosystem stability under future climate conditions.

Emissions Lock-in, Capacity, and Public Opinion: How Insights From Political Science Can Inform Climate Modeling Efforts

The implementation of ambitious climate policies consistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement is fundamentally influenced by political dynamics. Yet, thus far, climate mitigation pathways developed by integrated assessment models (IAMs) have devoted limited attention to the political drivers of climate policymaking. Bringing together insights from the political science and socio-technical transitions literature, we summarize evidence on how emissions lock-in, capacity, and public opinion can shape climate policy ambition. We employ a set of indicators to describe how these three factors vary across countries and regions, highlighting context-specific challenges and enablers of climate policy ambition. We outline existing studies that incorporate political factors in IAMs and propose a framework to employ empirical data to build climate mitigation scenarios that incorporate political dynamics. Our findings show that there is substantial heterogeneity in key political drivers of climate policy ambition within IAM regions, calling for a more disaggregated regional grouping within models. Importantly, we highlight that the political challenges and enablers of climate policy ambition considerably vary across regions, suggesting that future modeling efforts incorporating political dynamics can significantly increase the realism of IAM scenarios.

Advising national climate policy makers: A longitudinal analysis of the UK Climate Change Committee

Despite the recent proliferation of national climate change advisory bodies, very little is known about what advice they provide, to whom, and when. To address these gaps in the literature, this article systematically analyses all 700 of the recommendations made by the UK Climate Change Committee (CCC) in the period 2009–20. The CCC is one of the oldest climate change advisory bodies of its kind in the world and its design has been widely emulated by other countries. For the first time, this article documents how the CCC’s mitigation and adaptation recommendations have changed over time with respect to their addressee, sectoral focus and policy targets. It reveals that they became: more numerous per year; more cross-sectoral in their nature; clearer in targeting a specific addressee; and more focused in referring to specific policy targets. By drawing on Fischer’s synthesis of policy evaluation to derive a measure of policy ambition, it also reveals that despite many of its recommendations being repeated year after year, the CCC has become more willing to challenge the policy status quo. It concludes by identifying future research needs in this important and fast-moving area of climate governance, notably understanding the conditions in which the recommendations of advisory bodies (do not) impact national policy.

Accelerating Climate Change Adaptive Capacity Through Regional Sustained Assessment and Evaluation in Hawai‘i and the U.S. Affiliated Pacific Islands

As the impacts and risks from climate change increase, the climate assessment landscape has expanded in scope and application, resulting in the desire for more information relevant to local decision-making. Some regions lack detailed climate projections and a body of consensus findings about sector-specific impacts, and there is a need for actionable, culturally cognizant, translated climate information suitable for integration into operations and management, budgeting, funding proposals, and domestic and international policy. The Pacific Islands Regional Climate Assessment, or PIRCA, is the subject of this decade-long case study illustrating the need, development, and benefit of creating and sustaining a nuanced, collaborative, and deliberately inclusive climate assessment effort among researchers and practitioners in Hawai‘i and the US-Affiliated Pacific Islands (USAPI). Using external evaluations done in 2013 and 2021, and our observations as participants in the process, we describe regional adaptive capacity challenges—an important component of the decision context for PIRCA stakeholders—and analyze the role of the PIRCA network in accelerating climate adaptation. We also examine how regional and national assessments complement each other, and how assessment processes can aid in translation to sub-national decision making across the climate science-policy interface. Results reveal components of the PIRCA that are foundational to its effectiveness: framing climate information in human and decision-centric ways; use of inclusive and non-extractive methods; willingness to shift approaches to meet stakeholder objectives; leveraging the resources of the Pacific Regional Integrated Sciences and Assessments (RISA) and other boundary organizations; taking the time to build relationships; and creating a dedicated position to sustain collaborations and relationships within the region and at larger assessment scales. Our experience and the feedback received through the evaluation suggest that these lessons are transferable to other regions and scales, and that sustained and collaborative regional climate assessments can serve a key function in complementing major national and international assessments, by translating and more effectively targeting information to meet local needs in support of regional climate adaptation and policymaking.

Review Study of Energy Efficiency Measures in Favor of Reducing Carbon Footprint of Electricity and Power, Buildings, and Transportation

Circular economy aspires to achieve environmental quality by minimizing resource input and waste, emissions, and energy leakage by which the environmental impact of any of these activities is equivalent to its carbon footprint production. To combat climate change, an immediate task that depends on the promise of a single alternative would be extremely dangerous. Instead, a variety of options are needed, including changing the composition of demand (using less energy), structural changes in the composition of the economy (dirty vs cleaner sectors and products, and different input mixes in production), low-carbon transportation, more energy-efficient technologies, and low-carbon (particularly renewable) energy sources. This study aims to address means of promoting energy efficiency implemented within socio-economic sectors: electricity and power, buildings, and logistics and transportation along with their carbon footprint impact. Starting from illustrating the notion of carbon footprint and ways of estimation, strategies for lowering carbon footprint are discussed. Moreover, this paper demonstrates three case studies of energy efficiency and reduction of carbon footprint. The first highlighted the effectiveness of employing geothermal renewable resources via analyzing the system to determine which of the cooling tower or shallow aquifer cooling is more efficient, to be implemented in the system. The second case examined and optimized a cogeneration system to achieve the optimum configuration as well as maximum energy efficiency. The third study investigated an option to decarbonize heavy-duty transport via fuel cell electric vehicles in Switzerland. Last but not least, to enhance economic development by enhancing energy efficiency and low-carbon approaches, carbon pricing should be on the top of climate policy makers’ objectives to promote and implement.

On Social Robustness Checks on Science: What Climate Policymakers Can Learn from Population Control

ABSTRACT In this paper, I provide policymakers, who rely on science to address their missions, with two arguments for improving science for social benefits. I argue for a refined concept of social robustness that can distinguish socially appropriate cases of political reliance on science from inappropriate ones. Both of the constituents are essential for evaluating the social suitability of science-relevant policy or action. Using four cases of population control, I show that socially inappropriate political reliance on science can make science epistemically and socially harmful. Moreover, I argue that such an evaluation process should be supported by a political culture of mutual criticism within science and society. This demands freedom of expression and critical examination of science-relevant policy consequences in view of a sufficiently wide range of social value commitments. This paper suggests that the same considerations of social robustness and political culture of mutual criticism should be of general relevance for policymakers engaging in debates about science and values such as those regarding climate change.

MESMER-M: an Earth system model emulator for spatially resolved monthly temperature

Abstract. The degree of trust placed in climate model projections is commensurate with how well their uncertainty can be quantified, particularly at timescales relevant to climate policy makers. On inter-annual to decadal timescales, model projection uncertainty due to natural variability dominates at the local level and is imperative to describing near-term and seasonal climate events but difficult to quantify owing to the computational constraints of producing large ensembles. To this extent, emulators are valuable tools for approximating climate model runs, allowing for the exploration of the uncertainty space surrounding selected climate variables at a substantially reduced computational cost. Most emulators, however, operate at annual to seasonal timescales, leaving out monthly information that may be essential to assessing climate impacts. This study extends the framework of an existing spatially resolved, annual-scale Earth system model (ESM) emulator (MESMER, Beusch et al., 2020) by a monthly downscaling module (MESMER-M), thus providing local monthly temperatures from local yearly temperatures. We first linearly represent the mean response of the monthly temperature cycle to yearly temperatures using a simple harmonic model, thus maintaining month-to-month correlations and capturing changes in intra-annual variability. We then construct a month-specific local variability module which generates spatio-temporally correlated residuals with yearly temperature- and month-dependent skewness incorporated within. The emulator's ability to capture the yearly temperature-induced monthly temperature response and its surrounding uncertainty due to natural variability is demonstrated for 38 different ESMs from the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP6). The emulator is furthermore benchmarked using a simple gradient-boosting-regressor-based model trained on biophysical information. We find that while regional-scale, biophysical feedbacks may induce non-uniformities in the yearly to monthly temperature downscaling relationship, statistical emulation of regional effects shows comparable skill to the more physically informed approach. Thus, MESMER-M is able to statistically generate ESM-like, large initial-condition ensembles of spatially explicit monthly temperature fields, providing monthly temperature probability distributions which are of critical value to impact assessments.

When Digital Mass Participation Meets Citizen Deliberation: Combining Mini- and Maxi-Publics in Climate Policy-Making

The upcoming vogue of climate assemblies and other forms of mini-publics are to give citizens a central role in climate policy-making and to break the political impasse. Yet climate mini-publics face challenges in political environments too, such as co-option, favoring expert opinions, and losing touch with the broader public. To remedy such pitfalls, recent papers have argued to combine synchronous deliberations of small groups of citizens with online participation procedures for the larger public. In this article, we report the results of a three-step combination model, where first a mini-public in the region of Súdwest-Fryslân (NL) was given a “carte blanche” to draft the content and the parameters of several related policy alternatives. Second, their proposals were fed into a digital participation tool to consult the wider public. Third, a citizens forum translated the outcomes of the maxi-public into policy recommendations, which were unanimously approved by the municipal council. In this paper, we report our findings of combining mini- and maxi-publics and how the actors involved evaluated the strengths and weaknesses of the combination of these two participatory approaches.

Same, same but different? How democratically elected right-wing populists shape climate change policymaking

ABSTRACT The Paris Agreement expresses far-reaching commitments to combat climate change, but its translation into national contexts faces severe confrontation by populist movements and individuals worldwide. We unpack and compare how differently right-wing populist leaders translate rhetoric into climate policymaking and institutional change. We do so by investigating three areas of contestation: (1) the economic marginalization of the left behind, (2) conflicts between globalism and nationalist priorities, and (3) tensions between universalized science and situated experiences. We offer an analytical framework to study how right-wing populist leaders shape climate policymaking and test the approach with empirical observations from three democratically elected right-wing populists in the US, the Philippines, and Brazil. Populists severely affect climate policies in the long run, but these effects are highly context-specific. Engaging with populist climate politics needs to more seriously respond to local contexts and distinguish between the economic, anti-elitist, and knowledge foundations it is intertwined with.