About this Research Topic

Background

Under the Paris Agreement, nations are required to communicate their own climate plans, be it in the form of Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) or long-term low greenhouse gas climate-resilient emission development strategies (LTSs). While not necessarily legally binding, NDCs and LTS are fast becoming a relevant input for defining nations' climate legislation and industrial policies (Ross et al, 2021; Vogt‐Schilb and Hallegatte, 2017).

The design of climate strategies requires the rigorous consideration of deeply uncertain technological, economic, and political trends that may impact the effectiveness, feasibility, cost, and potential benefit of the economy-wide transformations required to achieve long-term decarbonization and resilience goals. Moreover, the development of comprehensive climate strategies requires constant interaction with a vast and diverse set of stakeholders from all sectors of the economy (Ross et al, 2021, National Research Council, 2009, National Research Council, 1996).

Decision Making Under Deep Uncertainty (DMDU) methods (Lempert et al., 2003, Marchau et al., 2019) can support the design of climate policy. DMDU methods combine computational experimentation and participatory planning. They can be used to support the development of tools and processes tailored to national contexts, and the integration of new models and data sources in response to stakeholder needs. Finally, DMDU methods can identify tradeoffs, exogenous stressors, and implementation milestones critical to ensure that climate strategies can achieve their development and climate objectives despite long-term uncertainty (Moallemi et al, 2022; Haasnoot et al, 2020; Molina-Perez, 2020).

However, despite their potential in this field, there is still limited scientific literature showing how DMDU methods perform in supporting the design of climate strategies (e.g., Benavides et al, 2021, Groves et al, 2020, Quirós-Tortós et al, 2021), nor methodological guidance as to how these methods can be deployed in real climate policy design contexts (Lempert et al, 2021).

With this research topic we aim to provide a deeper and more detailed understanding of how DMDU methods can be used to support the development and design of climate strategies. This research topic will a) collect studies that address these issues, b) contribute to ongoing discussions on how to use DMDU scholarship and methods in policy design, and c) put forward a research agenda that guide future research efforts in this field.

We invite original research, systematic review, perspective, and analysis pieces on the following:

1) Case studies of DMDU applications in climate strategy design
2) The use of DMDU methods and perspectives in The Sixth IPCC Assessment Report
3) New models, datasets, and interactive tools to support the design of climate strategies that tackle uncertainty and multiple objectives
4) New methods for vulnerability analysis of climate strategies
5) Methodological guidelines to integrate DMDU methods into climate policy design processes
6) Integrated Assessment Models and Deep Uncertainty
7) Multi-dimensional evaluation of long-term climate objectives
8) Participatory planning and climate strategies
9) Scenario Discovery Innovations applicable to climate strategy design
10) Adaptive Planning and climate strategies
11) Resilience Science and climate strategies
12) Risk of Delay and Climate Action
13) Socio-ecological approaches and applications to climate strategies
14) Methods and recommendations for combining DMDU and stakeholder participation in climate strategies design

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References
Benavides, Carlos, Luis Cifuentes, Manuel Díaz, Horacio Gilabert, Luis Gonzales, Diego González, David Groves et al. "Options to Achieve Carbon Neutrality in Chile: An Assessment Under Uncertainty." PhD diss., Interamerican development bank, 2021.

Groves, David G., James Syme, Edmundo Molina-Perez, Carlos Calvo Hernandez, Luis F. Víctor-Gallardo, Guido Godinez-Zamora, Jairo Quirós-Tortós, Felipe De León Denegri, Andrea Meza Murillo, Valentina Saavedra Gómez, and Adrien Vogt-Schilb, The Benefits and Costs of Decarbonizing Costa Rica's Economy: Informing the Implementation of Costa Rica's National Decarbonization Plan Under Uncertainty. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2020. https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA633-1.html.

Haasnoot, M., R. Biesbroek, J. Lawrence, V. Muccione, R. Lempert and B. Glavovic (2020). "Defining the solution space to accelerate climate change adaptation." Regional Environmental Change 20, no. 2: 1-5.

Lempert, R. J., S. W. Popper, and S. C. Bankes (2003). Shaping the Next One Hundred Years: New Methods for Quantitative, Long-term Policy Analysis. Santa Monica, CA, RAND Corporation.

Marchau, V. A. W. J., W. E. Walker, P. J. T. M. Bloemen and S. W. E. Popper (2019). Decision Making under Deep Uncertainty: From Theory to Practice, Springer

Moallemi, Enayat A., Sibel Eker, Lei Gao, Michalis Hadjikakou, Qi Liu, Jan Kwakkel, Patrick M. Reed, Michael Obersteiner, Zhaoxia Guo, and Brett A. Bryan. "Early systems change necessary for catalyzing long-term sustainability in a post-2030 agenda." One Earth 5, no. 7 (2022): 792-811.

Molina-Perez, Edmundo, Oscar A. Esquivel-Flores, and Hilda Zamora-Maldonado. "Computational Intelligence for Studying Sustainability Challenges: Tools and Methods for Dealing With Deep Uncertainty and Complexity." Frontiers in Robotics and AI 7 (2020): 111.

National Research Council (NRC) (1996). Understanding Risk: Informing Decisions in a Democratic Society. Washington, DC, The National Academies Press.

National Research Council (NRC) (2009). Informing Decisions in a Changing Climate. Washington, DC, Panel on Strategies and Methods for Climate-Related Decision Support, Committee on the Human Dimensions of Climate Change, Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education

Lempert, R. J. and S. Turner (2021). "Engaging Multiple Worldviews with Quantitative Decision Support: A Robust Decision-Making Demonstration Using the Lake Model." Risk Analysis 41(6): 845-865

Quirós-Tortós, J. et al. Costos y beneficios de la carbono-neutralidad en Perú: Una evaluación robusta. (Inter-American Development Bank, 2021). doi:10.18235/0003286.

Ross, Katie, Clea Schumer, Taryn Fransen, Shiying Wang, and Cynthia Elliott. "Insights on the First 29 Long-term Climate Strategies Submitted to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change." World Resour. Inst (2021).

Vogt‐Schilb, Adrien, and Stephane Hallegatte. "Climate policies and nationally determined contributions: reconciling the needed ambition with the political economy." Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Energy and Environment 6, no. 6 (2017): e256.

Keywords: Climate, climate strategies, climate uncertainty, design and policy, climate data, Climate Change, Uncertainty, long-term climate strategies, computational intelligence, participatory planning

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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