Towards a Moral Compass to Guide Sustainability Transformations in a High-End Climate Change World

High-end climate change (HECC) raises unprecedented challenges for the transformation of society’s governance arrangements. In such potentially dangerous situation, these challenges have profound moral—rather than only scientific, technical, or managerial—implications. Unfortunately, despite the growing recognition of the necessity for morally-grounded, urgent social-ecological reconfigurations in order to sustainably navigate the uncertain landscape derived from HECC, explicit moral guidance to support the transformation of governance arrangements is still lacking. This work, through the metaphor of a moral compass, proposes a normative tool to support an integrated assessment processes in order to confront the moral challenges and dilemmas in governance and thus favour sustainable transformations under conditions of HECC.

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Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: Transparency and integrated assessment modeling

Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews Climate Change ◽

10.1002/wcc.727 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Jim Skea ◽

Priyadarshi Shukla ◽

Alaa Al Khourdajie ◽

David McCollum

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Integrated Assessment ◽

Intergovernmental Panel ◽

Integrated Assessment Modeling

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Evaluating process-based integrated assessment models of climate change mitigation

Climatic Change ◽

10.1007/s10584-021-03099-9 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 166 (1-2) ◽

Author(s):

Charlie Wilson ◽

Céline Guivarch ◽

Elmar Kriegler ◽

Bas van Ruijven ◽

Detlef P. van Vuuren ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Climate Change ◽

Integrated Assessment ◽

Climate Change Mitigation ◽

Evaluation Method ◽

Evaluation Research ◽

Evaluation Framework ◽

Systematic Evaluation ◽

Integrated Assessment Models ◽

Wide Range ◽

Change Mitigation

AbstractProcess-based integrated assessment models (IAMs) project long-term transformation pathways in energy and land-use systems under what-if assumptions. IAM evaluation is necessary to improve the models’ usefulness as scientific tools applicable in the complex and contested domain of climate change mitigation. We contribute the first comprehensive synthesis of process-based IAM evaluation research, drawing on a wide range of examples across six different evaluation methods including historical simulations, stylised facts, and model diagnostics. For each evaluation method, we identify progress and milestones to date, and draw out lessons learnt as well as challenges remaining. We find that each evaluation method has distinctive strengths, as well as constraints on its application. We use these insights to propose a systematic evaluation framework combining multiple methods to establish the appropriateness, interpretability, credibility, and relevance of process-based IAMs as useful scientific tools for informing climate policy. We also set out a programme of evaluation research to be mainstreamed both within and outside the IAM community.

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