Global climate
(2017)
On 7-18 November, the twenty-second Conference of the Parties (COP-22) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the twelfth Meeting of the Parties to the Kyoto Protocol (CMP-12) took place in Marrakech. Due to the rapid entry into force of the Paris Agreement, Marrakech also hosted the first Conference of the Parties serving as the Meeting of the Parties to the Paris Agreement (CMA-1). Nobody had expected this one year before in Paris - the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, by comparison, had taken eight years. Many hailed the rapid entry into force as further proof of the commitment of the world community to finally tackle the climate problem.
Global climate
(2017)
On 12 December, the twenty-first Conference of Parties (COP-21) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) adopted the Paris Agreement. This marked the conclusion of the long process of crafting a new international climate regime that began with the adoption of the Bali Roadmap in 2007, failed spectacularly in Copenhagen in 2009, and resumed with a new approach in Durban 2011. This article summarizes and analyzes the main contents of the Paris Agreement.
Article 6 of the Paris Agreement establishes three approaches for countries to cooperate with each other in implementing their climate protection contributions. However, Article 6 sketches out only some basic contours; the details are to be filled in by further negotiations. This article surveys the views countries have submitted so far in order to identify the main issues at stake, points of controvery and convergence and possible ways forward. The submissions reveal some sharp differences in opinions on key issues such as the scope of the new mechanisms, how to operationalise the Article 6 requirement to increase ambition, whether to have international provisions on the promotion of sustainable development, and how to protect environmental integrity in the use of Article 6. The article concludes with a number of recommendations on how to address these controversies.
The contribution of the EU bioeconomy to sustainable development depends on how it is implemented. A high innovation potential is accompanied by considerable risks, in particular regarding the exacerbation of global land use conflicts. This article argues that a systemic monitoring system capable of connecting human-environment interactions and multiple scales of analysis in a dynamic way is needed to ensure that the EU bioeconomy transition meets overarching goals, like the Sustainable Development Goals. The monitoring should be centered around a dashboard of key indicators and targets covering environmental, economic, and social aspects of the bioeconomy. With a focus on the land dimension, this article examines the strengths and weakness of different economic, environmental and integrated models and methods for monitoring and forecasting the development of the EU bioeconomy. The state of research on key indicators and targets, as well as research needs to integrate these aspects into existing modeling approaches, are assessed. The article concludes with key criteria for a systemic bioeconomy monitoring system.
Renewable energy targets in the European Union (EU) have raised the demand for timber and are expected to increase dependence on imports. However, EU timber consumption levels are already disproportionally high compared to the rest of the world. The question is, how much timber is available for the EU to sustainably harvest and import, in particular considering sustainable forest management practices, a safe operating space for land-system change, and the global distribution of "common good" resources. This article approaches this question from a supply angle to develop a reference value range for the current as well as future sustainable supply of timber at the EU-27 and global levels. For current supply estimates, national-level data on forest area available for wood supply, productivity in that area, as well as the rate available for harvest were collected and aggregated into three potential supply scenarios. For future supply estimates, a safe operating space scenario halting land use change, a sensitivity analysis, and a literature review were performed. To provide both a comparison of global versus EU sustainable supply capacities and to develop a benchmark toward evaluating and comparing levels of consumption to sustainable supply capacities, per capita calculations were made. Results revealed that the per capita sustainable supply potential of EU forests is estimated to be around three times higher than the global average in 2050. Whether a global or EU reference value is more appropriate for EU policy orientation, considering both strengthened economic and cultural ties to the forest in forest-rich countries as well as the need to prevent problem shifting associated with exporting land demands abroad, is discussed. Further research is needed to strengthen and harmonize data, improve methods for modeling future scenarios and incorporate interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder perspectives toward the development of robust and politically relevant reference values for sustainable consumption levels.
The growing demand for wood to meet EU renewable energy targets has increasingly come under scrutiny for potentially increasing EU import dependence and inducing land use change abroad, with associated impacts on the climate and biodiversity. This article builds on research accounting for levels of primary timber consumption - e.g., toward forest footprints - and developing reference values for benchmarking sustainability - e.g., toward land use targets - in order to improve systemic monitoring of timber and forest use. Specifically, it looks at future trends to assess how current EU policy may impact forests at an EU and global scale. Future demand scenarios are based on projections derived and adapted from the literature to depict developments under different scenario assumptions. Results reveal that by 2030, EU consumption levels on a per capita basis are estimated to be increasingly disproportionate compared to the rest of the world. EU consumption scenarios based on meeting around a 40% share of the EU renewable energy targets with timber would overshoot both the EU and global reference value range for sustainable supply capacities in 2030. Overall, findings support literature pointing to an increased risk of problem shifting relating to both how much and where timber needed for meeting renewable energy targets is sourced. It is argued that a sustainable level of timber consumption should be characterized by balance between supply (what the forest can provide on a sustainable basis) and demand (how much is used on a per capita basis, considering the concept of fair shares). To this end, future research should close data gaps, increase methodological robustness and address the socio-political legitimacy of the safe operating space concept towards targets in the future. A re-use of timber within the economy should be supported to increase supply options.
Vision development towards a sustainable North Rhine-Westphalia 2030 in a science-practice-dialogue
(2017)
The paper presents the results of a participatory vision development process in the Federal State of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW) in Germany. The vision development was part of a scientific research project that accompanied the development of a sustainability strategy for NRW at state level. The Sustainability Strategy NRW was adopted in July 2016 and contains parts of the vision developed in the research project: Sentences from the narrative text vision and proposed targets and indicators that back-up the vision for a sustainable NRW in 2030 were used by the state of NRW. The vision was developed in iterative steps in three consecutive dialogue rounds with different stakeholders from science and practice. The paper presents the methodological approach and the results of the vision formulation process. The paper discusses the lessons learned from the vision development - from both practical and theoretical perspectives of transition management. The paper explores the relevance of setting ambitious targets for sustainable development as part of a state strategy by taking the proposed target of a "4 × 25% modal split" by 2030 as an example. The project demonstrated that a participatory approach for vision development is time and resource consuming, but worth the effort as it improves the quality and acceptance of a vision. Furthermore, the project demonstrated that transformative science contributes valuable inputs for sustainability transitions and for facilitating participatory vision development.
This paper analyses India's participation in more than two decades of global climate politics. India has transitioned from a protest voice on the fringes of global climate policy to one that is actively shaping international efforts to combat climate change. Analysis of the drivers behind India's negotiating positions on climate change thus far has focused on the competing motives of equity and co-benefits, which has however been insufficient to explain some of India's recent actions in global climate governance. There is a gap in the literature with regards to the analysis of Indian climate policy as situated in its larger foreign policy agenda and objectives. This paper studies the evolution of India's climate policy through the perspective of its broader foreign policy strategy, arguing that India's engagement with international climate politics can be better understood by locating its climate policy as a subset of its foreign policy agenda. Shifts in India's climate change negotiation stance in the past decade have been but a part of its overall foreign policy adjustments in favour of greater responsibility in management of the global commons. Going forward, tracking Indian foreign policy objectives will yield vital clues towards India’s role in global climate action.
Modelling studies which project pathways for the future of energy in India currently have several implicit assumptions with regards to the social, institutional, and political changes necessary for energy transitions. This paper focuses on the specific question of land use change required for realising ambitious clean energy targets. Demand for land is likely to be a critical question in India's energy future given the challenges with land acquisition in the country as a result of high population density and significant rights enjoyed by landowners. Yet, there is a lack of literature relevant to India which makes a quantitative assessment of the land use impacts of different types of low carbon technologies. I calculate and compare the land requirements in India of ground based solar photovoltaic (PV) power, nuclear power, and wind energy. All three types of technologies are expected to grow substantially as a share of India's electricity mix in the coming years. The analysis suggests that land demands of ground based solar PV are likely to be substantial compared to wind energy and nuclear power, and some policy suggestions are provided which may help mitigate that challenge.
In order to analyse the mid- and long-term impacts of energy related policies, different modelling approaches can be derived. However, the results of even the best energy system model will highly depend on the underlying input data. First, in this contribution the importance and availability issues of grid data in the context of energy system modelling are highlighted. Second, this paper focuses on power grid modelling based on open and publicly available data from OpenStreetMap using open source software tools. Two recent approaches developed to build electrical transmission network models using openly available data sources are presented and discussed. The proposed methods provide transparent assumptions, simplifications and documentation of grid modelling. This results in the ability of scientists and other stakeholders to validate, discuss or reproduce the results of energy system models. Thus the new open approaches offer a unique opportunity to increase transparency, comparability and reproducibility of results in energy system modelling.