Our Common Journey A Transition Toward Sustainability (1999) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
3 Exploring the Future
3 Exploring the Future
Pages 133-184
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 133... ...
We nonetheless believe that the inevitable trials may be made more productive, and the likelihood of costly and irreversible errors may be reduced through organized efforts to assess the possible future implications of present trends, relying on growing understanding of earth system processes and social goals. The international efforts in recent years to address threats to the stratospheric ozone layer is a case in point.
|
From page 134... ...
If we can find ways to generate a range of plausible alternative futures, we can use them to evaluate different behavioral strategies for their likely efficacy and robustness in the face of a range of alternatives, and for how easily these strategies can be adapted to deal with unanticipated developments. Efforts to structure and discipline our thinking about future possibilities in the light of present knowledge and intentions may therefore have an important role to play in shaping strategies for a sustainability transition.
|
From page 135... ...
Effectiveness: Finally, tools needed for exploring the sustainability transition should be effective in actually illuminating pitfalls and oppor
|
From page 136... ...
Study panels such as those organized under the auspices of the Brundtland Commission, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) , the International Council for Science (ICSU)
|
From page 137... ...
An intermediate strategy that has proven helpful for exploring the future has been the use of extrapolation, drawing both on past trends and on analogous circumstances elsewhere. Relatively sophisticated examples include work on trends such as decarbonization the long-term reduction in the amount of carbon produced per unit of energy and the demographic transition discussed in Chapter 2, the cataloging of environmental degradation syndromes advocated by the German Advisory Council on Global Change, and econometric forecasts of energy use.5 These approaches work well to the extent that they capture deep underlying forces not readily subject to deflection.
|
From page 138... ...
Similarly, in the absence of comprehensive accounting frameworks, emissions of large-scale pollutants such as carbon dioxide can be underestimated when only some sectoral sources are considered. Starting with pioneering work by Resources for the Future in regional environmental management, reflecting integrated studies of the basins of the Potomac, Delaware, and Ruhr rivers, comprehensive accounting frameworks have helped to minimize such errors in careful efforts to explore alternative futures.
|
From page 139... ...
model of regional and global environment and health for sustainability in the Netherlands.~7 Early Efforts Early efforts in developing integrated assessment models included systems dynamics studies and, at the global scale, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growths This work helped to draw attention to sustainability issues, but largely failed to satisfy criteria of scientific credibility. A second round of integrated modeling took place in the context of the energy crises of the 1970s.~9 Again, while detailed predictions were not the strong points of these models, they did manage to provide insight into the structure of problems at the interface of society and environment.
|
From page 140... ...
In its 1995 report, the IPCC reviewed the 22 such models listed in Table 3.1 and classified them according to the scheme shown in Table 3.2.26 Some such classification is necessary to sort through the increasing variety of integrated assessment models being applied in explorations of
|
From page 141... ...
DIAM (Dynamics of Inertia and Adaptability Model) ICAM-2 (Integrated Climate Assessment Model)
|
From page 142... ...
TARGETS (Tools to Assess Regional and Global Environmental and Health Targets for Sustainability)
|
From page 144... ...
Three are particularly germane to explorations of a future transition towards sustainability. Uncertainty: While many contemporary integrated assessment models remain deterministic, a number have begun to focus attention on the characterization and treatment of uncertainties, both in the values assumed by specific model coefficients and in the functional form of the models.
|
From page 145... ...
· Moving beyond "baseline" or "business as usual" representation of future conditions to a recognition of the wide potential range of future social, economic and environmental conditions; bifurcations and turning points; and different coherent packages of driving forces and responses. · Addressing the local and regional implications of global change and sustainable development.30 Simplification: The deliberate simplification of complex integrated assessment models has been used since the early 1970s to investigate the important interconnections of long-term, large-scale phenomena.31 The emergence of integrated assessment illustrates how studying these interconnections has become increasingly plausible in the climate change research arena, even though the underlying science is incomplete and variable in its predictive power across disciplines.
|
From page 146... ...
These alternatives frame a parametric study of the regional implications of climate change, without awaiting global-scale models accurate enough to support a regional analysis. This approach is being used by the National Synthesis Group of the National Climate Impact Assessment, now in progress in the United States.32 Lessons Learned The accumulating experience from these and other integrated assessment models suggests several important lessons for efforts to apply similar approaches in exploring possible futures of a sustainability transition.
|
From page 147... ...
Deliberate simplification of complex integrated assessment models can be an important part of strategies for exploring the future. Again, the value of this approach has long been recognized by experienced modelers of complex nature-society interactions.38 But the temptation remains to let the search for complex "realism" become an end in itself in integrated assessment modeling.
|
From page 148... ...
In common with the best integrated modeling approaches, the point of scenario analysis is not to predict what long-term outcomes are most likely, but to explore the economic and technical feasibility and costs associated with quite different development paths. Scenario approaches, however, place less stringent demands on comprehensive causal understanding and data about the current state of the world than do looks at the future based exclusively on
|
From page 149... ...
In two seminal articles, the analysis team argued for the need to use scenario analysis to look beyond conventional projections in order to change the "mental models" of company managers.40 The Shell team continues to engage in far-reaching analysis of global futures, and the work has been a major contribution to scenario efforts of the World Business Council on Sustainable Development.4~ Another contemporary effort revisits the earlier Limits to Growth systems dynamics model, World 3.42 The authors present a set of 13 scenarios ranging from collapse to a transition to sustainability, arguing that in the past 20 years some options for sustainability have narrowed, others have opened up, and that achieving a sustainable future is both technically and economically possible. Finally, another example of scenario analysis presents three global scenarios, with special focus on the United Kingdom, for the future through the year 2020.43 A retrenchment scenario projects that, eventually, a recession of such severity will occur that, within a few years, there will be a dramatic collapse in the economic systems of both developed and developing countries.
|
From page 150... ...
Our use of the GSG framework reflects a judgment on neither the desirability nor the likelihood of the strategic alternatives it presents. Rather, we have used it as a reminder of how much is carelessly taken for granted, especially about different possible configurations of underlying socioeconomic conditions, in many explorations of futures relevant to a sustainability transition.
|
From page 151... ...
The utility of the GSG framework can be further appreciated by pursuing it to the next level of detail one for which six stylized scenarios appear in Figure 3.1. Within the Conventional Worlds class, a Policy Reform scenario variant complements the business-as-usual of the Reference case variant by assuming that strong, comprehensive, and coordinated government action is taken in an effort to foster sustainability.
|
From page 152... ...
A more compelling goal is the careful explication and analysis of a few archetypal possibilities that can illuminate the contours of alternative futures and aid in preparing for them. To better understand the potential of such approaches, this Board asked a member of our Board and a leader of the GSG46 to carry out a preliminary scenario analysis of some of the possible futures that would attain the normative goals we set forth in Chapter 1.
|
From page 153... ...
Though our perspective here is global, it should be stressed that a full research program for sustainability would need to be conducted consistently across multiple levels of spatial resolution. For example, global scenarios, generally disaggregated for major regions, clarify planetary level phenomena climate change, globalization and trade, geopolitics, migration pressure but are too grainy to pick up sustainability issues at, say, the river basin or ecosystem level.
|
From page 154... ...
Ultimately, a fully developed strategy for exploring sustainability futures would have the capacity to "zoom" across spatial levels, with each nested level providing appropriate insights. Such flexible treatment of scale is a challenge at the forefront of current work in both integrated assessment modeling and scenario analysis.48 REGIONAL INFORMATION SYSTEMS Good integrated assessment models constitute an explicit system of hypothesized causal hypotheses.
|
From page 155... ...
As in the preceding discussions of integrated assessment models and scenarios, the Board's purpose here is to provide a critical appraisal of the utility and limitations of regional information systems for exploring possible futures for a successful transition. The Range of Experience Efforts to integrate science-based "what if" analyses in regional resource and environmental management regimes date back to at least the 1950s.5° By the 1960s, with the impetus of studies at the Harvard Water
|
From page 156... ...
The "product" of their "what if" views of the future increasingly came to be seen especially as a process of confidence building an investment in social capacity to continually learn from past management actions to shape future actions better. Throughout the 1980s, a number of groups experimented with the use of integrated modeling, scenario analysis, and strategic gaming to support the adaptive management of environment-development interactions at the regional scale.54 A typical but particularly relevant example for our purposes is provided by a striking analysis of Balinese rice culture.55 Through classic anthropological field methods, a researcher uncovered ways in which local knowledge embedded in religious rituals provided social coordination for complex planting, pest management, and water allocation decisions involved in Balinese rice production.
|
From page 157... ...
A second contemporary example concerning North America's Columbia River Basin stresses how important the integrated design of information systems and management institutions is for the sustainable development of conflicted resource systems.57 The Columbia River, the fourth largest in North America, was developed by an ambitious federal program of dams, irrigation works, and navigation facilities beg3nriing in 1933. By the time the last dam was completed in 1975, the region which in several respects included Canada, where the Columbia rises had achieved an economically successful integration around hydroelectric power.
|
From page 158... ...
Lessons Learned Experience in developing information support systems for regionalscale environmental management has led to several significant findings. A regional scale approach grounded in ecosystem knowledge and cooperative and adaptive management constitutes an infrastructure for social learning a way to lay out scientific knowledge in a form that can be accessible to nonspecialists, a mode of communication and negotiation that can draw opponents together for learning as well as conflict resolution, and a means to continue learning as action proceeds.
|
From page 159... ...
Integrated assessment models have been accepted at the highest levels of international negotiation. But they have not stilled lively controversies about interpreting or responding to emerging evidence that human activity is modifying the global environment.
|
From page 160... ...
This transition could be achieved without miraculous technologies or drastic transformations of human societies. This judgment is illuminated by the analysis in the appendix of a "Hunger and Carbon Reduction Scenario." What will be required, however, are significant advances in basic knowledge, in the social capacity and technological capabilities to utilize it, and in the political will to turn this knowledge and knowhow into action.
|
From page 161... ...
. In particular, we developed for reference purposes a Current Forces and Trends scenario, in which no major policy initiatives are undertaken to promote sustainability, and compared this scenario to a Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario, in which explicit efforts are made to reach the sustainability goals outlined in Chapter 1.
|
From page 162... ...
4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 0.5 0.0 1995 2025 2050 1 Population GDP per World GDP Food Hunger Energy Water CO2 Capita Emissions Hunger and Carbon Reduction Scenario 4.0 3.5 3.0 2.5 2.0 1.5 1.0 1 995 1~ 2025 C1 2050 0.0 Population GDP per World GDP Food Hunger Energy Water co2 Capita Emissions FIGURE S>2 Overview of Current Forces and Trends and Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenarios. Source: Raskin et al.
|
From page 163... ...
Whether, and how, they can be incorporated in scenario efforts are crucial questions in evaluating the suitability of such scenario approaches for exploring possible futures of a sustainability transition. For the work reported here, the incidence of extreme poverty and hunger was treated as depending on population, economic development, and income distribution.
|
From page 164... ...
Climate Change Turning to the implications of the Current Forces and Trends scenario for climate change, we focus on carbon dioxide emissions from energy use, the major source of greenhouse gases. The changing regional patterns of energy requirements in the scenario are broadly compatible with the mid-range IPCC IS92a scenario.68 While global energy needs grow by a factor of 2.4 over the scenario period, developing regions requirements grow by a factor of 3.9.
|
From page 165... ...
. Our illustrative Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario, which is based on the GSG's Policy Reform scenario, assumes slightly lower population growth than the Current Forces and Trends scenario due to poverty reduction and more active family planning policies.
|
From page 166... ...
stays almost constant over the scenario time frame, while in the Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario, the ratio more than doubles, increasing from 0.15 in 1995 to 0.36 in 2050. National equity decreases from 0.15 to 0.08 in the Current Forces and Trends scenario, but remains almost constant in the Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario.72 While these distribution assumptions imply significantly greater social equity than in the Current Forces and Trends scenario, they are not implausible, being near today's values in Europe and those of the 1960s in the United States.
|
From page 167... ...
Globally, emissions per capita remain almost constant between 1990 and 2025, and decrease from 2025 to 2100. To meet these emission constraints, the Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario assumes strong actions for energy-efficiency, renewable energy resource development, and fuel switching.76 Global energy requirements increase by 56 percent by 2050, which is 36 percent lower than the level foreseen in 2050 in the Current Forces and Trends scenario (Sheet 6~.
|
From page 168... ...
But the scenario is based on another kind of heroic premise and here is the troubling news. It assumes the emergence of sufficient political will for establishing a comprehensive set of policy reforms for a sustainability transition.
|
From page 169... ...
America297369384 Pacific OECD149154146 W Europe467492469 Developing4,3826,6307,985 Transitional392394383 OECD9131,015998 World5,6878,0399,367 Hunger and Carbon Reduction 2.4 0.7 1.2 2.4 1.3 -0.1 0.0 0.7 0.1 0.2 1.4 0.0 0.4 1.4 0.1 0.6 1.3 0.7 -0.2 -0.1 0.2 -0.2 -0.2 0.7 -0.1 -0.1 1.9 0.5 1.0 1.9 1.0 -0.1 0.0 0.5 0.0 0.0 1.1 0.0 0.2 1.2 0.6 0.9 .
|
From page 170... ...
Europe9,085 Developing5,310 Transitional802 OECD22,094 World28,205 Hunger and Carbon Reduction 1,165 3,958 9,279 3,839 12,099 22,555 2,858 7,449 14,071 938 3,159 6,554 4,329 14,160 30,745 588 1,039 1,396 1,206 2,197 3,032 7,995 18,552 28,016 3,146 6,082 8,524 7,352 14,422 20,953 13,129 40,825 83,204 1,794 3,236 4,427 18,493 39,056 57,492 33,416 83,1 17 145,124 _ 4.2 3.5 3.8 3.9 2.5 3.3 3.2 2.6 2.9 4.1 3.0 3.6 4.0 3.1 3.6 1.9 1.2 1.6 2.0 1.3 1.7 2.8 1.7 2.3 2.2 1.4 1.8 2.3 1.5 1.9 3.9 2.9 3.4 2.0 1.3 1.7 2.5 1.6 2.1 _ _ 3.4 8.0 3.2 5.9 2.6 4~9 3.4 7.0 3.3 7.1 1.8 2.4 1.8 2.5 2.3 3.5 1.9 2.7 2.0 2.8 3.1 6.3 1.8 2.5 2.1 3.1 3.1 2.3 2.7 2.5 4.3 CAfrica475 China +893 Latin America1,651 Middle East522 S+SE Asia1,769 E Europe274 FSU528 N
|
From page 171... ...
] [~ ~' I ~ ~ fi ECD 1995 2025 2050 20252050 Current Forces & Trends Hunger & Carbon Reduction Current Forces and Trends Africa 1,619 2,722 4,534 China + 2,887 7,369 13,234 Latin America 5,999 10,804 17,366 Middle East 5,261 8,643 13,123 S+SE Asia 2,581 5,71 1 10,512 E
|
From page 172... ...
1 72 National Equity Current Forces & Trends Hunger & Carbon Reduction O] ~ ~ ~ 1~ 1995 2025 2050 1995 2025 2050 Current Forces and Trencis Africa 0.13 0.09 0.07 China+ 0.14 0.10 0.08 Latin America 0.07 0.06 0.06 Middle East 0.10 0.07 0.06 S+SE Asia 0.18 0.11 0.09 E
|
From page 173... ...
. mII mill , ; ~ ~ ~ ~ ~i 111515 115515 x _ ~ ~ ~ ~_ O- _ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 1995 2025 2050 2025 2050 Current Forces & Trends Hunger & Carbon Reduction Current Forces and Trends 1~1 Africa El China + ID Latin America Middle East 1~1 S+SE Asia E
|
From page 174... ...
! 200 o Current Forces and Trends 1995 2025 2050 Current Forces & Trends 2025 2050 Hunger & Carbon Reduction Africa 1750 98 China + 48105 144 Latin America 2455 84 Middle East 1838 60 S+SE Asia 43114 205 E
|
From page 175... ...
55555555555555~ . _~m l MA MA 1995 2025 2050 Current Forces & Trends Current Forces and Trends Coal95 166 224 Crude Gil141 256 332 Natural Gas73 136 203 Uranium25 39 64 Hydropower9 16 20 Renewables41 64 87 Total384 677 929 Hunger and Carbon Reduction Coal95 1 13 63 Crude Gil141 183 153 Natural Gas73 156 215 Uranium25 22 Hydropower9 16 20 Renewables41 68 148 Total384 558 599 .
|
From page 176... ...
Europe FSU N America Current Forces and Trends , .
|
From page 177... ...
1985. Scenario analysis.
|
From page 178... ...
1997. Integrated assessment models for acid rain.
|
From page 179... ...
1998. Personal reflections on an unfinished journey through global environmental problems of long timescale.
|
From page 180... ...
1997. Integrated assessment models of global climate change.
|
From page 181... ...
TARGETS (Tool to Assess Regional and Global Environmental and Health Targets for Sustainability)
|
From page 182... ...
Integrated assessment models, in contrast, constitute an evolving methodology conducive to critical appraisal, application, and improvement. 17 Club of Rome, Meadows et al.
|
From page 183... ...
, part of the Stockholm Environment Institute's Polestar Project, was established to engage a diverse group of development professionals in a long-term commitment to examining the requirements for sustainability. GSG is an independent, international, and interdisciplinary body that represents a variety of geographic and professional experiences and engages in an ongoing process of global and regional scenario development, policy analysis, and public education.
|
From page 184... ...
These plausibility constraints define a possible scenario space. Both the Current Forces and Trends scenario and the Hunger and Carbon Reduction scenario lie within this scenario space.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.