Transitioning Toward Sustainability Advancing the Scientific Foundation: Proceedings of a Workshop (2016) / Chapter Skim
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2 Decision Sciences, Demography, and Integrated Assessment Modeling
2 Decision Sciences, Demography, and Integrated Assessment Modeling
Pages 7-21
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From page 7... ...
He suggested that further analysis is needed of subsystems that exist and operate within larger systems to adequately understand higher-level interactions and feedbacks. Such a method was applied to the IPCC's Third Assessment Report on sustainable development and international equity in 2001, which tried to model decisions made in climate policy.2 A birds-eye view of how climate policy fits within larger frames of sustainable development and international equity was applied instead of a dissected analysis of individual decisions and actors (Figure 2-1)
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, GDP per capita, and gross climate outcomes. The added complexities to these IAMs enable them to assess systems more holistically and to develop sustainability indicators that cover a diverse ground of human capital, economic, and environmental impacts and drivers, including land use, ecosystems, net primary productivity, water and heat stress, electric generation and capacity, and cost effectiveness.
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. 10 PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency Integrated Model to Assess the Global Environment (IMAGE)
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Joseph Arvai, Max McGraw Professor of Sustainable Enterprise and director of the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the University of Michigan, discussed the progress made in developing models to support decision making for sustainability and additional efforts still needed to address remaining challenges. He opened his discussion by pointing to the increasing prevalence of research in decision sciences and the emergence of studies Figure 2-3 that provide relevant context to sustainability.
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Another example of prevalent research in decision sciences with relevant context to sustainability is the increasingly popular decision science concept of "nudging," which provides an option to encourage individuals to make rational decisions based on their values as opposed to emotional decisions. Proponents of nudging suggest that if one can identify the instinctive patterns of biased preferences, then one can reconfigure the world to help individuals make choices internally consistent with their values.14 Though such nudge studies have been highly successful, they suggest that individuals realize their internally consistent preferences in decision making without much effort, which does not completely align with the complexities associated with sustainability decision making.
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He discussed how human numbers and demographic differential vulnerability relate to sustainability challenges, as well as what well-being indicators and demography metrics offer for sustainability science. He began with a brief analysis of world population outlooks commenting that population metrics had varying degrees of uncertainty largely due to rapid fertility rate declines in Africa (Figure 2-6)
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probabilistic world population projections. The red segment represents a 95 percent uncertainty range for world population projections, the grey segment represents a 80 percent uncertainty range, and the yellow segment represents a 20 percent uncertainty range.
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Dr. Lutz and others pointed to a clear differential vulnerability in adaptive capacity to climate change where climate change does not affect the entire population, but rather affects livelihoods, health, and migration possibilities and depends on the individual's empowerment.20 Similar results were summarized for vulnerability to natural disasters, where research established education as a key determinant.21 Thus, generally empowering the population to adequately respond to climate change challenges may be more effective than only developing concrete climate change infrastructure.
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, or literate life expectancy, poverty life expectancy, happy life expectancy, or any combination of these factors. A possible sustainability metric based on demographic indicators would measure empowered life expectancy and account for whether it declined over time in any subpopulation or not.
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For example, the public health sector creates R03038 metrics around heat-related mortality, but those metrics do not take into account short-term forecasts about climate raster/not editable change. This would help public health officials to better set up early warning systems and make action plans for periods of decades or longer.
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Elena Bennett, associate professor at McGill University, discussed models that support decisions related to sustainability, gaps and critical barriers to models, and new efforts needed to address opportunities related to sustainability.
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There are many utopian visions in classic literature and in modeled scenarios in scientific literature, but there is R03038 never an explanation of the transition needed to arrive at the scenario. Other key topics that are part of utopian raster/not editable narratives that need to be incorporated into integrative assessment models include cultural diversity, resilience, political economy, and urban centers.
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allows researchers and policy makers to focus on a select number of indicators that are broad, have normative consensus, and for which relatively good data exist. A more select list of indicators helps to avoid a cacophony of Figure 2-11 hundreds of indicators and can supplement standard economic measures, such as gross domestic product per capita.
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There is an iterative communication process between the public and those conducting scientific analysis, which links public deliberation with the analysis. A 2008 NRC report on public participation concluded that "when done well, public participation improves the quality and legitimacy of decisions and builds the capacity of all involved to engage in the policy process."26 Improvement in this context means that the quality of decisions or assessments is better.
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DECISION SCIENCES, DEMOGRAPHY, AND INTEGRATED ASSESSMENT MODELING 21 • Value expertise: everyone has legitimacy regarding values, but good processes and research may help articulate values and reduce value conflict. Sustainability is about decisions and making trade-offs under uncertainty.
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