Organising Policy-Relevant Knowledge for Climate Action

Abstract

Greenhouse gas emission scenarios are key in analyses of human interference with the climate system. They are mainly produced by one category of computer models: Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs). We analyse how IAM research organised into a community around the production of socio-economic scenarios during the preparation of the IPCC AR5 (2005-2014). We seek to describe the co-emergence of a research community, its instruments, and its domain of applicability. We highlight the role of the IPCC process in the making of the IAM community, showing how IAMs worked their way to an influent position. We then survey three elements of the repertoire that served to organise collective work on scenarios in interaction with the IPCC and the European Union, and which now frames the community and its epistemic practices. This repertoire needs to articulate epistemic practices with the pursuit of policy relevance, which shows how epistemic communities and patterns of co-production materialise in practical arrangements.

Negative emissions and the long history of carbon removal

“…Calls for "institutional reflexivity" (Wynne, 1993) are highly relevant in this context and highlight a need to render the "internal processes (and not just the products)" of negative emissions research into "a legitimate subject of public evaluation" (Wynne, 1984). There is an emerging literature that aims to do this for BECCS, by making visible the often-hidden networks of collaboration, funding and problem-definition involved in emerging areas of science and technology, and to provide a transparent evidence base that can inform assessment and democratic deliberation (Cointe, Cassen, & Nadaï, 2019;Hughes & Paterson, 2017;Laude, 2019). There are also ongoing efforts to "open up" the conversation on NETs (and solar geoengineering) through deliberative methodologies, involving a broad group of actors, which can help to promote reflexivity by exposing the societal limits of scientific assumptions (S. Beck & Mahony, 2018a;Bellamy, 2016;Bellamy, Chilvers, & Vaughan, 2014;Blue, 2018).…”

Carbon Dioxide Removal Policy in the Making: Assessing Developments in 9 OECD Cases

“…This justification is in line with a paradigm in EU climate policy that attaches great importance to evidence-based target setting and policy design (Geden et al, 2018). Concurrently, the EU plays a key role in funding the production and mobilization of climate science, in particular, it played a decisive role in the financing of the integrated assessment modeling community (Lövbrand, 2011;Cointe et al, 2019)-one of the key gateways for the diffusion of the CDR issue on the political agenda (Low and Schäfer, 2020). Although the EU's long-term strategy models net negative CO 2 in the second half of the century (European Commission, 2018) and legislation includes language on the need for it, actual target-setting and other policy initiatives do not address the issue so far; it is almost exclusively addressed by climate scientists.…”

How Can Transformative Sustainability Research Benefit From Integrating Insights From Psychology?

“…A key issue of a transdisciplinary understanding of sustainability lies in the field of behavioral change and lifestyles. A lot of scientific advice for decision-makers is being provided based on so-called integrated assessment models (IAMs) that (implicitly or explicitly) include assumptions about collective behavior and behavioral change (van Vuuren et al, 2011;Béatrice et al, 2019). Undoubtedly, psychology can offer important insights and tools to understand the aspects and mechanisms shaping lifestyle choices and collective behavioral changes.…”