Climate change impacts and mitigation across spatial scales

Using the Shared Socioeconomic Pathways and Representative Concentration Pathways, ERD researchers compared the effects of stringent mitigation policies on the agricultural and forestry sectors with the effects of climate change itself. The policy assessed was a carbon tax consistent with climate stabilization at 2°C above the pre-industrial level. The analysis showed that such a top down policy implementation could potentially have even more severe effects on food availability in developing regions than climate change.

These results highlight the need to reconcile the top-down mitigation potential estimates and the bottom-up, socially acceptable policy design. The study served as a key background analysis to the World Bank report on the impact of climate change on poverty. To aid these bottom-up processes, ERD has also quantified regional development scenarios in collaboration with the Climate Change Agriculture and Food Security Program of CGIAR and with the International Food and Policy Research Institute, informed adaptation and mitigation policy developments in countries such as Burkina Faso, Tanzania, or Uganda. ERD experience in the multi-scale analysis supports also the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project’s Coordinated Global and Regional Assessment group launched in 2015.

Last edited: 15 March 2016