Integrating climate change and sustainable development ... - CiteSeerX

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Int. J. Global Environmental Issues, Vol. 1, No. 2, 2001

Integrating climate change and sustainable development John B. Robinson and Deborah Herbert Sustainable Development Research Institute, University of British Columbia, B5, 2202 Main Mall, Vancouver, Canada V6T 1Z4 E-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] Abstract: The links between climate issues and sustainable development are manifold. Given these interconnections, the lack of close integration of the sustainable development and climate change literatures is puzzling; part of the reason for this lack of connectivity may be the very different research and policy traditions out of which each field developed. This paper argues that integrating climate change and sustainable development approaches, concepts and methods may have some important benefits. To demonstrate this point, we briefly discuss recent developments in both the climate change and sustainable development fields and then turn to the question of how to integrate them. The analysis suggests several conclusions of possible relevance to climate change and sustainable development research, including the need for an approach to scenario analysis that integrates across all aspects of climate change and sustainable development research, and the critical importance of alternative development paths and the assumptions about the reference case or baseline that underlie any analysis. Keywords: Sustainable development; climate change; integrated assessment; scenarios. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Robinson, J.B. and Herbert, D. (2001) ‘Integrating climate change and sustainable development,’ Int. J. Global Environmental Issues, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp.130–149. Biographical notes: John Robinson is Director of the Sustainable Development Research Institute (SDRI), and Professor in the Department of Geography at UBC. At SDRI he directs several research programs in the areas of climate change and policy, modelling sustainable futures in the Georgia Basin, and the development of modelling and scenario analysis tools. His personal research interests include the human dimensions of global change, the regional analysis of sustainable futures, and the relationship between science and decision-making. Dr. Robinson is a Convening Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report, a member of the Board of the Canadian Climate Program, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of the Inter-American Institute for Global Change Research. Deborah Herbert is a researcher and project development coordinator at the Sustainable Development Research Institute of the University of British Columbia. She has worked extensively in the fields of climate change and ecological economics, conducting research on climate change impacts and adaptation, policies for greenhouse gas mitigation (national and international), changes in energy use and contributing factors, the economic aspects of climate

Copyright © 2001 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

Integrating climate change and sustainable development

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change, and ecological tax reform. She is a Lead Author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Third Assessment Report.

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Introduction

Although the climate issue is necessarily embedded in larger issues associated with the interaction among social, economic and ecological systems over time, until recently the literatures on climate change and sustainable development have had little to do with each other. The reasons are rooted in a complex set of factors (see [1] for a discussion), but one result has been that it has proved very difficult to integrate sustainable development issues into Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) activities. Although IPCC Working Group III was explicitly asked to address sustainable development issues in its Second Assessment Report, the actual discussion of these issues in the report is almost non-existent. As a consequence, the topic of ‘development, equity and sustainability’ has been officially designated a cross-cutting issue of the highest priority in the work of the IPCC. To aid in the incorporation of this issue, an IPCC guidance paper [2] has been produced and expert meetings held in Colombo [3] and Havana [4]. The links between climate issues and sustainable development are manifold. Climate policy, and the impacts of climate change, will have significant implications for sustainability decisions and options at multiple spatial scales. In addition, policy and behavioural responses to sustainable development may affect the ability to develop and successfully implement climate policies, and the ability to respond effectively to climate change. In this way, climate policy response will affect the ability of countries to achieve sustainable development goals, while the pursuit of those goals will in turn affect the opportunities for, and success of, climate policy responses. Given these interconnections, the lack of close integration of the sustainable development and climate change literatures is puzzling. In a recent paper [1], we argued that part of the reason for this lack of connectivity was the very different research and policy traditions out of which each field developed. In general, the climate change literature is science-driven, based on a problem definition, and approach to analysis, which emerged out of the natural sciences. It is academically rigorous, but difficult to connect directly to policy. The sustainable development literature, on the other hand, is problem-driven, emerging directly out of a concern for particular policy and social issues, such as poverty or environmental degradation. Reflecting this range of concerns, it is much more diverse and less intellectually rigorous and coherent. On the other hand, it is usually connected very closely to policy issues. This difference is represented schematically in Figures 1 and 2, adapted from Cohen et al. [1].

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J.B. Robinson and D. Herbert The climate change discourse, 1970s to present

Source: Cohen et al [1]


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Figure 2

Source: Modified from Cohen et al. [1]

The lack of connection between these two literatures has important implications for issues such as the evaluation of specific mitigation options or the nature of impact analysis, but here we will concentrate on some broader questions. This paper will argue that integrating climate change and sustainable development approaches, concepts and methods may have some important benefits. To demonstrate this point, we will briefly discuss recent developments in both the climate change and sustainable development fields and then turn to the question of how to integrate them.

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Climate change

We will focus here on issues of mitigation, and to a lesser extent, impacts and adaptation; we will not discuss the science of climate change itself. It is obvious from the changing contents of the First, Second and Third Assessment Reports of the IPCC that the mitigation, impacts and adaptation literatures are in a state of transition. In particular, there has been increasing recognition of a complex set of policy issues related to international development and equity (e.g., burden sharing; allocation issues), technological change and development, the differential costs of the timing and locus of response (where and when questions), differing vulnerabilities and impacts and their connection to states and trajectories of development, and the behavioural and socio-economic dimensions of different types of policy measures and instruments. All of these issues indicate the need to broaden the scope of the analysis to include a much wider range of social science and humanities expertise. They also suggest the importance of thinking in an integrated way about how all these issues connect together.

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J.B. Robinson and D. Herbert

In essence, this is the problem of scenarios, which attempt to provide internally consistent and comprehensive ‘stories’ of possible future worlds. Of particular interest in this connection is the question of the baseline: the assumptions about the future state of the world that will give rise to emissions, and that will be subject to climate change impacts. The choice of baseline has an enormous impact on the estimation of cost and benefits of mitigation as well as on the sustainable development dimensions of climate (and other) policies. The baseline drives greenhouse gas emission scenarios which in turn drive climate modelling and, by extension, impacts and adaptation analysis. In fact, it is not too much to say that the results of all climate change analysis are to a great degree a function of key assumptions about how the socioeconomic future will unfold in the absence of climate change. Similarly, the nature of the future world will have a profound impact on the nature and severity of climate change impacts and will determine the scope of and possibilities for adaptation to climate. For instance, increased drought conditions will have, ceteris paribus, more severe consequences for a world of 10 billion or more people than a world of only a few billion, especially if income equality is low, ecosystems are already stressed and governance systems are inadequate. In this connection, it is particularly interesting to look at the results of the IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (SRES) [5]. The SRES involved an elaborate process of review and analysis of emission scenarios. This review included only reference or ‘non-intervention’ scenarios; in other words, no explicit climate policy was considered in any of the scenarios. The SRES reviewed the literature on emission scenarios and created a database of over 400 scenarios. Figure 3 shows the carbon emissions associated with the full range of scenarios in the SRES database. The range of emissions in 2100 for reference (‘noncontrol’) and climate policy (‘control’) scenarios from the database is shown on the right. The database scenarios were statistically analysed and then six new scenario groups, organized into four scenario families, were created. For each family, a narrative storyline was created; several modelling groups from around the world then developed quantifications of these storylines, including 40 emission scenarios [6]. Six scenarios were selected to illustrate the whole set of scenarios. These six illustrative scenarios include one representative scenario from each of the four families as well as two additional scenarios, A1F1 and A1T, that explore alternative energy technology development in the A1 world [6]. Some of the scenarios within each family are harmonized as to driving forces; for each family one emission scenario was chosen as a representative scenario. Figure 4 shows each of the four SRES families and scenarios. Each scenario family, based on a particular narrative storyline, depicts a different possible future world. The A2 world is heterogeneous; it is a world in which regional identities are strengthened. This world has high population growth and medium economic growth. The B2 world is also heterogeneous, but in this world there is an emphasis upon sustainability. There is medium population growth and medium economic growth.

Integrating climate change and sustainable development Figure 3

SRES emission scenarios

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J.B. Robinson and D. Herbert SRES scenarios

The A1 world is one in which there is economic and cultural convergence, rapid technological change, high economic growth and low population growth. The B1 world is also characterized by convergence, rapid technological change and low population growth, but in this world there is a strong emphasis upon sustainability. The SRES analysis is complex and raises a host of issues; here we want only to point to a fundamental finding of the analysis. Figure 3 shows the range of carbon emissions associated with each of the four SRES scenario families. For the purposes of this paper, the important point is that the range of emissions for the four families is extremely large, from lower than 1990 emissions to about five times higher than 1990 emissions. This corresponds to a range in global carbon emissions from 5.7 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon to 29 Gt (1990 = 6 Gt). In other words, there exist multiple potential worlds within which emissions, risks, impacts, adaptive capacity, cost and benefits will vary considerably. It is important to remember that these are all reference scenarios that assume no climate policy, just different assumptions about driving forces. Thus, independent of explicit climate policy initiatives, which future ‘world’ we will live in will have significant consequences for carbon emissions, the costs and benefits of mitigation and the impacts of climate change. In fact, which future world we end up in may have a much greater effect on carbon emissions than whether or not we have explicit climate policy initiatives in that world. Moreover, which future world we end up in will have major effects on the costs and benefits of further mitigation and on impacts and the capacity for adaptation.


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On the other hand, the SRES analysis also shows that alternative combinations of driving forces can lead to similar levels of GHG emissions by the end of the next century [7]. There is no one-to-one relationship between driving forces and carbon emissions. The implications of these findings for sustainable development issues are profound. They suggest that development path decisions may be more important than climate policy decisions, even in determining climate impacts, risk, costs and benefits. However, there is no easy linkage between such development path decisions and emissions. In other words, climate change and sustainable development are profoundly linked but in complex ways; there is therefore a need to examine carefully the linkage between climate policy and other decisions, developments, policies and behaviours [8].

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Sustainable development

From the beginning, the concept of sustainable development has been closely associated with an attempt to integrate social and economic issues into the environmental agenda [9]. Arguably, this was the central message of the Brundtland report [10] which argued, among other things, that at the global level, environmental issues could simply not be successfully addressed in isolation from human problems of poverty and development. Despite scepticism on the part of many environmentalists (who were concerned that the language of sustainable development was a thinly disguised attempt by governments and industry to promote the agenda of continued economic growth under a false veneer of environmental concern) the idea that we need to integrate social, economic and environmental concerns is the truly radical dimension of the sustainable development argument. In this sense, the ambit of sustainable development is much broader than the old agenda of environmental concern, bringing to the fore such issues as poverty, income distribution, trade, investment, wealth creation, competitiveness, and jobs, as well as the more familiar issues of resource depletion, pollution, biodiversity loss and protection, species conservation, maintenance of essential life support systems, and environmental ethics. Whether from opportunistic or altruistic motives, the new agenda was speedily adopted during the 1990s, at least rhetorically, by significant portions of the public and private sectors. A plethora of national and sub-national government policies, international conventions, private sector initiatives, and new consultative bodies sprang up, especially in the period leading up to, and immediately following, the World Conference on Environment and Development, held in Rio in 1992 and attended by more heads of state than any international event before or since. In the period following this initial outpouring of enthusiasm, however, it has become apparent that the sustainable development agenda is rather more challenging than perhaps was first envisaged. Some of the reasons for this are of direct relevance for the subject of this paper. Any attempt to truly integrate across social, economic and environmental issues at any spatial scale is speedily confronted by the existence of a huge array of public policy, institutional/organizational, and behavioural issues of almost bewildering complexity. Each of these three fields has its own institutional and political history, and the record of success in achieving goals in any one of them is not a particularly happy one. In a world where environmental conditions are deteriorating rapidly in many regions, where economic conditions are grim or worse in others, and where systems of governance are

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breaking down into chaos and military force in others (to mention only the most evident challenges), a belief in the possibility of some kind of integrated response that simultaneously addresses the three dimensions of sustainable development may seem somewhat naïve. Yet it is also becoming increasingly apparent that the linkages among these various issues are not just rhetorical. Poverty is often closely linked, as both cause and consequence, with environmental degradation, and economic growth is tied in complex ways with social development and environmental conditions [11]. While hopes for simple and powerful solutions to the problems of sustainable development have not borne fruit, it is increasingly clear that more integrated approaches offer the only hope for longterm solutions. Given the long-term nature of the sustainable development problem, these approaches must be grounded in attempts to come to grips, in a holistic way, with alternative possible combinations of future developments in any given region or jurisdiction. This, in turn, is the problem of scenarios. In this way, the integrated and more holistic nature of the sustainable development agenda, relative to the older environmental one, points out the need for more comprehensive approaches to scenario analysis, based upon attempts to articulate how complex social, economic and environmental systems interact over time, and what choices these interactions give rise to. In this connection, sustainable development offers a new way to conceptualize, and analyse such options, and a new way to organize our thinking about future possibilities. It is no accident, for example, that the global scenario analyses of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development [12], the Global Scenarios Group [13], and the IPCC SRES [5], use sustainable development or sustainability as an organizing principle for some of their scenarios. A key characteristic of most sustainable development analysis and policy is the attempt to provide some framework in terms of which ecological, social, and economic dimensions can be integrated (although the social is usually the least well-integrated in practice). The diversity of ways in which this is done, and the ambiguity and vagueness inherent in the concept of sustainable development, mean that there is no single approach to integration [14]. We have therefore chosen to outline briefly one such framework, as an example of how such integration may be approached. This is the sustainable development framework we are developing at the Sustainable Development Research Institute at the University of British Columbia [15]. The framework is the focus of a five-year regional case study in BC that has recently begun [16]. We are currently attempting to develop a series of other regional applications around the world, including Bangalore, India; the Langat Basin, Malaysia; Mexico City, Mexico; Manchester, UK; and the Pearl River Delta, China. The key assumption underlying this work is that there is global unsustainability in all three dimensions: ecological, social, and economic. This leads us to our definition of sustainable development as the reconciliation of three imperatives: the ecological imperative to remain within biophysical carrying capacity, the economic imperative to provide an adequate material standard of living for all people, and the social imperative to provide systems of governance that propagate the values by which people want to live (Box 1). Because of the many interconnections among the three imperatives, it is impossible to address any one of three in isolation. In fact, they need simultaneous reconciliation.


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Box 1 Sustainable development can be defined as the reconciliation of three imperatives: 1

Ecological Imperative - to stay within biophysical carrying capacity

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Economic Imperative - to provide an adequate material standard of living for all

3 Social Imperative - to provide systems of governance that propagate the values that people want to live by

We propose a twin strategy intended to contribute to simultaneous reconciliation of the three imperatives: dematerialization and resocialization. Dematerialization involves uncoupling economic activity from the throughput of matter and energy to an economy by significantly reducing the material and energy inputs to production (Figure 5). In other words, it involves vastly improving the efficiency by which natural resources are used (by adoption of eco-efficiency or industrial ecology approaches). Figure 5

Dematerializing the economy

Source: Robinson and Tinker [15]

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Dematerialization is the subject of increasing attention in both the literature [17] and the policy arena. If successful, it holds the promise of significantly improving our ability to provide for growing material needs without increasing, and perhaps reducing, environmental impacts. However, it addresses only the environmental efficiency of the production system. It is a technical fix and, as such, ignores the social dimensions of sustainability. To address these issues, we propose the strategy of resocialization, which involves uncoupling human well-being from economic activity through the building up of social capital and its substitution for formal economy consumption [18]. Resocialization focuses on the demand-side, on consumption and also governance issues (Figure 6). It involves the recognition that many forms of social activity and behaviour that people value are not measured in terms of economic output. Indeed, the development and maintenance of many forms of social capital take place entirely outside the formal economy and are simply not measured by traditional indicators of economic activity. Figure 6

Resocializing society


Taken alone, the concepts of resocialization and dematerialization are inadequate for complementary reasons. While the latter ignores the social dimensions of sustainability, the former ignores its material requirements. A combination of these two approaches gives rise to a more integrated view of the relationship among ecological, social and economic systems. In Figure 7, which combines the contents of Figures 5 and 6, economic activity (the middle lines) has been progressively uncoupled from matterenergy throughput (bottom line) through dematerialization strategies, and human well-


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being (top line) has been progressively uncoupled from economic activity through resocialization strategies. Over time, matter-energy throughput falls (and so therefore do impacts on ecological carrying capacity), human well-being rises, and economic activity (middle lines) lies somewhere in between, rising significantly in many parts of the developing world (and among disadvantaged communities in the developed world), and rising less so or even falling in parts of the industrialized world. Figure 7

Sustainable development: combining the policy wedges


From this perspective, economic activity is viewed as a means, while increasing human well-being and decreasing matter and energy throughput are viewed as ends. For any region, the level of economic activity will vary depending on the material circumstances of the area in question, which raises the relevance of ‘tunnelling through’ or ‘technological leapfrogging’ issues [19]. The timely transfer of new, highly efficient technologies to developing nations may well assist them in decoupling human well-being and biophysical throughput, via dematerialization.

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In our Georgia Basin Futures Project, we will be evaluating these strategies, and by means of some innovative computer modelling software, we will be taking these issues out in a large public consultation campaign that allows interested citizens to engage in a process of constructing and evaluating scenarios of sustainable futures in the Basin that reflect their own values and preferences. We hope also to apply this general approach in other regions around the world, and eventually to look at the ‘connective tissue’ among regions at the global scale [14,20]. This very brief presentation of the conceptual framework underlying our project begs a large number of questions [21]. We mention here only the question of spatial and temporal scales. Although the problem of unsustainability is global, it plays out very differently in all regions of the world, which have very different sets of economic circumstances, resource endowments, socio-economic conditions, cultures, and governance systems. Therefore, a regional approach is required. The temporal scale is also critical: people find it hard to engage with processes that take place over centuries. We choose a timeframe of 40-50 years. This is long enough to allow turnover of major capital stocks; it also is roughly the working life of many citizens, or their children. The purpose of presenting this framework is not to argue for its universal applicability or validity but to point out some linkages between such an approach to sustainable development and the climate change issues discussed earlier. In both cases, there is a growing concern with the underlying socio-cultural and technological development paths that determine the kind of world we will be living in. In contrast to earlier generations of analysis, which tended to treat such issues as exogenous givens underlying the analysis, newer work in both the climate change and sustainable development fields focuses on the degree of choice we have with regard to such paths, and the impacts of such choices. On the other hand, a major difference between the two literatures is one of scale, both temporal and spatial. The climate change debate is mostly global and on a timescale of a century or more, while most sustainable development work is much more local and with much shorter timescales. With these brief overviews as background, we now turn to the question of linkages.

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Linkages: an adaptive framework?

One legacy of the science-driven nature of the climate change research process has been a kind of sequential view of the climate change problematique: from driving forces to emissions, to atmospheric concentrations to changes in the physical climate system, to impacts, to adaptation. While this view has a certain elegance to it, it grossly oversimplifies a complex process of feedbacks and inter-relationships and also relegates crucial aspects of the human dimensions of climate change to the status of exogenous variables, as either ‘drivers’ or responses [22]. More recent climate change research, and much of the sustainable development research around the world, suggest the need for a more complex framing of the problem, one that is sensitive to the complexities of the human systems in which both climate change and sustainable development problems are embedded. There are no doubt several ways to do this, but one potentially fruitful way may be through a more expansive approach to the idea of adaptation.


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In the climate change literature, adaptation is seen in terms of adaptation to climate change, as a response to impacts of climate change. More recent work has recognized that adaptation is an ongoing process (‘autonomous adaptation’) and that one can adapt in anticipation of potential changes (‘anticipatory adaptation’). What is proposed here is an extension of these new approaches, in the light of the preceding discussion of climate change and sustainable development, to include the issue of alternative development paths. This approach is consistent with a complex adaptive systems approach [23]. The general idea is that humans (and other species) continuously adapt to a range of changes in the biophysical, economic, and socio-cultural environment. Only some of these adaptations have directly to do with climate change; many more occur for non-climate related reasons but have significant effects on greenhouse gas emissions or climate change impacts. The fundamental goal of human adaptive responses is to increase the resilience or robustness of specific human systems to both expected and unanticipated changes in future conditions. There are therefore two key questions: what degrees of choice exist in achieving different sets of future conditions, and how can that choice can exercised. This latter question raises issues of costs and benefits, uncertainty and risk management, governance and decision making, etc. Given the inter-relatedness of ecological, social, and economic systems, these questions are best dealt with, not at the level of individual stressors (e.g. climate) or sectors, but at the level of alternative packages of development paths. This permits a more holistic view to be taken, including some awareness of trade-offs among competing goals. It also permits issues like climate change to be contextualized in terms of sustainable development issues. From this point of view, climate change issues provide critical long-term warning signals that interact in complex ways with overall choices about future development paths. This also permits distinction to be made among goals (sustainable development), on the one hand, and issues (climate change) or means (climate change policy), on the other. One way to conceptualize the arguments made here is in terms of Figures 8 and 9, which show how the current unidirectional causality of much current work might be made more holistic and integrated. Figure 8 shows the sequence of much current climate change work, which starts with emission scenarios, from which are derived atmospheric concentrations and then climate change impacts. While useful, this sequence of analysis typically breaks off before the linkages are made between climate change impacts and adaptation, on the one hand (which flow down from the top right-hand diagram in Figure 8), and the underlying socio-economic drivers of the emissions scenarios, on the other (which are the determinants of the bottom left-hand diagram in Figure 8). Moreover, the analysis is almost always framed entirely in terms of climate-related policy and impacts only, despite the fact that, as argued above, much of the actions that will most affect climate emission, impacts, and adaptive capacity will be made for reasons that have nothing to do with climate [24].

144 Figure 8

J.B. Robinson and D. Herbert Integrated assessment: the climate change example

Figure 9 shows how these problems might be remedied. First, it generalizes the problem beyond climate change to environmental change more generally, by using the familiar Pressure-State-Response framework. In this view, the issue is how to analyse the relationship between environmental change generally and socio-economic development paths. Second, the diagram fills in the missing link in the analysis, by proposing the development of regional integrated assessment analyses of the socio-economic conditions which both condition the impacts of, and adaptive capacity related to, environmental change, and also give rise to the driving forces of environmental change. These socioeconomic conditions can best be addressed by scenarios analysis at a regional scale that is sensitive to particular local conditions that constrain behaviour and determine impacts. Figure 9

Integrated assessment: the general case


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A crucial component of this approach is the recognition of the need to connect impact and adaptation analysis directly to alternative socio-economic conditions. In the same way that it might be useful to broaden the concept of climate change adaptation to include non-climate-related behaviour, it is also useful to recognize that there are multiple possible worlds within which any impacts and adaptation will occur. Just as the recognition of multiple baselines has been a major development in the emissions scenario literature, so the same recognition needs to inform impacts and adaptation analysis. This can best be done by providing explicit linkages between global and regional socioeconomic and technological development pathways. How this can be done is a significant research challenge. The approach illustrated in Figure 9 is of course only suggestive. Many practical problems of implementation remain. Nevertheless, such an approach, if implemented, would begin to address some critical gaps in current analyses, would start to link climate change and sustainable development issues in a truly integrated way, and would speak to the real social and political agendas of specific regions.

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Conclusions

This analysis suggests several conclusions of possible relevance to climate change and sustainable development research. First, sustainable development and climate change interact profoundly on a number of levels. As indicated by the climate change literature, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing adaptability will contribute to a range of sustainable development goals unrelated to climate [25]. At the same time, as the SRES analysis suggests, sustainable development policies can make a major contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, even in the absence of explicit climate policy. Second, a recognition of this interconnectedness suggests the desirability of going beyond a narrow treatment of climate change issues. It is important not to sub-optimize on climate change issues, but to instead consider linkage with other types of policy, since these may prove to have more significant effects on emissions and impacts. Third, the emergence of ‘development, equity and sustainability’ as a cross-cutting issue in the work of the IPCC offers a major new opportunity to contextualize climate change issues in a sustainable development framework [2]. This would have the advantage of making climate change more relevant to policy by grounding climate change in real world sustainable development issues. This also suggests the need for an incremental approach to climate change policy, which must be able to fit into the context of particular local, regional, and national policy agendas. Fourth, a central insight emerging from both the sustainable development and climate change fields is the critical importance of alternative development paths and the assumptions about the reference case or baseline that underlie any analysis. Recent work suggests that it is important to recognize the potential existence of multiple worlds, but much climate policy analysis to date has been predicated upon the assumption of a single baseline for underlying socio-economic dynamics. As noted in Chapter 8 of the IPCC Working Group III Second Assessment Report, this means that the results of much mitigation costing analysis is meaningful only relative to the baseline assumed in the analysis. Therefore it tells us little about the relative costs and benefits of mitigation between different analyses or in alternative baseline scenarios [26,27]. What is needed is

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scenario analysis that allows us to evaluate how much choice we have about what kind of world we will end up in (and the associated costs, benefits, institutional and social impacts, etc., of making such choices). Fifth, this in turn suggests the need for an approach to scenario analysis that integrates across all aspects of climate change and sustainable development research. On the climate side, given the sequential process of developing emission scenarios, climate scenarios, and impact scenarios, and the time lines associated with the running of GCM experiments, this argues for an iterative process of integrated scenario analysis that generalizes beyond narrowly-construed climate issues, and continues over time, somewhat independent of the timing of IPCC reports. Particular attention needs to be paid to the integration of impact analysis with underlying socio-economic scenarios. On the sustainable development side, much can be learned about how to link environmental issues with social and economic ones from the very detailed scenario and modelling work in the climate field. Finally, spatial and temporal scale are critical issues both analytically but also in terms of policy relevance. Most sustainable development work is at regional and subdecadal scales; most climate change work is at global and centuries scales. We need to connect these two sets of scales in hierarchical analyses that allow the larger scale interactions to be expressed in terms of smaller scale effects. As argued above, this might be most fruitfully pursued in the context of integrated assessment analyses at the regional scale. Clearly much remains to be done to link climate change and sustainable development in a meaningful way. Fortunately, as argued in this paper, recent developments in both fields suggest some powerful and interesting ideas for directions to pursue.

References and Notes 1

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Cohen, S., Demeritt, D., Robinson, J. and Rothman, D. (1998) ‘Climate change and sustainable development: towards dialogue’, Global Environment Change, Vol. 8, No. 4, pp.341–371. Munasinghe, M. (2000) ‘Development, equity and sustainability (DES) in the context of climate change’, IPCC Guidance Paper, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Geneva, Switzerland. Munasinghe, M., and Swart R. (Eds.) (2000) Climate Change and its Linkages with Development, Equity and Sustainability, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Geneva, Switzerland. Pichs, R, Leary, N. and Swart, R. (Eds.) (2000) Development, Sustainability and Equity: Proceedings of the Second IPCC Expert Meeting on DES, Havana, Cuba, 23–25 February. Nakicenovic, N., Alcamo, J., Davis, G., de Vries, B., Fenhann, J., Gaffin, S., Gregory, K., Grubler, A., Jung, T.Y., Kram, T., La Rovere, E.L., Michaelis, L., Mori, S., Morita, T., Papper, W., Pitcher, H., Price, L., Riahi, K., Roehrl, A., Rogner, H-H., Sankovski, A., Schlesinger, M., Shukla, P., Smith, S., Swart, R., van Rooijen, S., Victor, N. and Dadi, Z. (2000) Special Report on Emission Scenarios, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. It should be noted that this attempt to link qualitative storylines and quantitative scenarios represents an innovative approach to scenario analysis, which itself opens the door to linking sustainable development and climate change issues, independent of the specific results of the SRES analysis. This issue will be further discussed in Chapter 2 of the upcoming IPCC Working Group III report.

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At a very simple level, this can be seen using the ‘Kaya’ identity (Kaya, 1990) where CO2 emissions = Population*(GDP/Population)*(Energy/GDP)*(CO2/Energy). All things being equal, low economic activity (GDP) combined with high population can lead to the same level of CO2 emissions as low population and high economic activity. In a preliminary attempt to examine these linkages, several modelers used the new SRES scenarios as baselines for a series of emission mitigation scenarios. These scenarios are discussed in chapter 2 of the upcoming IPCC Working Group III report and in a special issue of Environmental Economics and Policy Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (2000). Early uses of the concept can be found in the work of Lester Brown (1981) and the IIASA Biosphere Project (Clark and Munn, 1986). However, the term sustainable development came into prominence in 1987, with the publication of the report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987). For a brief discussion of the history of the concept, see Cohen, et al. (1998). World Commission on Environment and Sustainable Development (WCED), (1987) Our Common Future, Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. For a discussion of some of these linkages, see Robinson and Tinker (1998). World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), (1997) Exploring Sustainable Development: WBSCD Global Scenarios 2000-2050 Summary Brochure, London: World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Gallopin, G., Hammond, A., Raskin P. and Swart, R. (1997) ‘Branch points: global scenarios and human choice’, Polestar Series Report No. 7. Boston, MA: Stockholm Environment Institute. While this vagueness and ambiguity are sometimes seen as evidence of conceptual weakness and lack of rigour, they can also be interpreted as offering the potential for negotiation and compromise in the inherently political context of sustainable development. Such 'constructive ambiguity', which is often a key component of diplomatic negotiations, can be useful when trying to get very disparate interests to gather around the same table. See the discussion in Cohen et al. (1998). Robinson, J., and Tinker, J. (1998) ‘Reconciling ecological, economic, and social imperatives’, in J. Schnurr and S. Holtz (Eds.) The Cornerstone of Development – Integrating Environmental, Social and Economic Policies, Ottawa: International Development Research Centre; New York: Lewis Publishers. Robinson, J. et al. (1998) ‘Reconciling ecological carrying capacity and human well-being: exploring alternative futures for the Georgia Basin’, Proposal submitted to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Major Collaborative Research Initiatives Program, June 30; text available at http://www.sdri.ubc.ca/gbfp/f_mcri.html. See, for example, WBCSD, 1993; Lowe, 1992; von Weizsacker et al., 1997; and Welfens, 1993. While there is a long literature, going back to the pioneering work of Schumacher (1973) on the social dimensions of what would now be called sustainability and Daly (1973) on the limitations of using economic activity for measuring social welfare, there has been less follow up on alternative approaches to human well-being (but see Daly, 1977; 1996; Daly and Cobb, 1989; Cobb et al., 1995; Cobb et al., 1999). The newly emerging literature on social capital (e.g., Putnam, 1993) seems to offer some useful points of connection to this issue, though as originally formulated by Putnam, it has to do with the contribution of social capital to economic growth, not the substitution of one for the other. Goldemberg, J. (1992) ‘Technological leapfrogging’, Loyola of Los Angeles International and Comparative Law Journal, Vol. 15, pp.123–137. Robinson, J. and Rothman, D. (2000) ‘Future subjunctive: bringing together expert knowledge, public values, and the simulation of sustainable futures in the Georgia Basin Futures Project’, Presentation to IEEE International Symposium on Technology and Society, Rome, 6–8 September.

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21 Including issues related to the relationship between reductions in matter and energy intensity and increases in activity levels; the distributional consequences of eco-efficient production systems; trade and investment effects; the interactions between systems of governance, social capital formation, and lifestyles; shifting patters and levels of employment; the substitutability or complementarity of labour, natural capital, and human-made capital; etc. For a more detailed discussion of these issues, see Robinson and Tinker (1998). 22 Newby, H. (1993) ‘Global environmental change and the social sciences: retrospect and prospect’, Paper presented to the IGFA Preparatory meeting, Noordwijk, the Netherlands. 23 Costanza, R. (1999) ‘Ecological sustainability, indicators and climate change’, Chapter 5 in M. Munasinghe and R. Swart (Eds.) Climate Change and Its Linkages with Development, Equity, and Sustainability, Proceedings of the IPCC Expert Meeting on Development, Equity and Sustainability, Colombo, Sri Lanka, 27-9 April, 1999, Colombo, Sri Lanka: LIFE, Biltoven, Netherlands: RIVM and Washington, US: World Bank: pp.109–142. 24 In fact, the situation is worse than this in practice, since the inevitable time lag caused by the long set-up and run times of GCM climate models means that the impacts analysis is usually based on an earlier generation of climate model results than those being developed on the basis of new emission scenarios. 25 This issue is sometimes framed in terms of the ‘double dividends’ or ‘ancillary benefits’ potentially associated with climate policy. The argument presented in this paper suggests that that is a somewhat wrong-headed way of thinking of these issues, equivalent to letting the (climate change) tail wag the (sustainable development) dog. 26 Hourcade, J-C. et al. (1996) ‘Estimating the costs of mitigating greenhouse gases’, Chapter 8 in J. Bruce, H. Lee and E. Haites, (Eds.) Climate Change 1995: Economic and Social Dimensions of Climate Change, Report of Working Group III of the IPCC Second Assessment Report, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 27 Hourcade, J.-C. and Robinson. J. (1996) ‘Mitigating factors: assessing the costs of reducing GHG emission’, Energy Policy, Vol. 24, Nos. 10/11, pp.863–873.

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Putnam, R.D. (1993) Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. Schumacher, E.F. (1973) Small is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered, London: Vintage. von Weizsacker, E., Lovins, A.B. and Hunter Lovins, L. (1997) Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Having Resource Use. London: Earthscan. Welfens, Maria J. (1993) ‘De-materialization strategies and systems of national accounts’, Fresenius Environmental Bulletin, Vol. 2, No. 8 pp.431–436. World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD), (1993) ‘Getting eco-efficient’, Report of the BCSD First Antwerp Eco-Efficiency Workshop, November, Geneva: World Business Council for Sustainable Development.