What does your research say about population and climate? In our recent review article published in the journal Population Studies, we give a summary of much of the work that has been carried out over the past few years both at IIASA and at the Wittgenstein Centre for Demography and Global Human Capital (IIASA, VID/ÖAW; WU) on the contribution of changes in population size and structures to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as societies’ capacity to adapt to climate change. Similar to Mia Landauer in last week’s blog entry, we emphasize the importance of addressing challenges to mitigation and adaptation jointly.
What’s new or unexpected in this study? The main novelty behind our approach is the explicit inclusion of the full population detail by age, sex, and educational attainment in assessments of societies’ future adaptive and mitigation potential. This is exemplified in the context of IPCC-related climate change modelling which until recently has included only very limited information on the future of population. The new Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs), which were developed with a huge contribution by IIASA, are an important step to overcoming this situation and to make models of both future greenhouse gas emissions, as well as vulnerability and adaptive capacity with respect to climate change far more realistic.
Why is it important to consider the composition of population in regards to future climate change issues? When thinking about the challenges of the future, it is important also to think about the capabilities that future societies will have to face them. I don’t mean that we should simply lean back and wait for science-fictional future technologies to solve all the problems of humanity, but a look at the changing future composition of populations around the world gives reason for optimism that future societies will be better at preparing, coping, and dealing with the consequences of yet unavoidable climate change than we are today.
What are the links between education and climate change? Particularly in the developing world, education leads to reduced poverty. But economic growth and the resulting greater affluence, and consumption, also increases global CO2 emissions. So on a first look, education appears to worsen climate change. This has made some environmental activists skeptical about the value of education in the context of mitigation. But to avoid playing poverty eradication and well-being against climate change mitigation, it is necessary to look at behavioral differences at given levels of income. In fact, better education has been shown to be related to more eco-friendly consumption behavior, especially when it comes to home energy use and transportation, two of the main drivers of climate change. In addition to that, education has also been a major driver of technological advancements in the transition to cleaner energy sources.
How do the new SSPs bring demography into the study of climate change?
Population growth is undoubtedly one of the main drivers of greenhouse gas emissions and thus climate change. What’s far less acknowledged is the importance of differential climate impact depending on demographic characteristics. Groundbreaking work by researchers from IIASA and the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) featured in the article has shown that people have different footprints when they are young than when they are old and that household consumption differs between rural and urban dwellers. Providing different scenarios for the future composition of populations by age, sex, and educational attainment, the new SSPs for the first time allow researchers from different fields to study the dynamics between population and climate change within a common reference frame.
References Lutz W, Striessnig E (2015) Demographic aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation. Population Studies: A Journal of Demography, 69(S1):S69-S76 (April 2015). doi: 10.1080/00324728.2014.969929
O’Neill, Brian C., Michael Dalton, Regina Fuchs, Leiwen Jiang, Shonali Pachauri, and Katarina Zigova. “Global Demographic Trends and Future Carbon Emissions.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107 (October 2010): 17521–26. doi:10.1073/pnas.1004581107.
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
In a new study in the journal Climatic Change, IIASA Guest Research Scholar Mia Landauer explores the interrelationships between policies dealing with climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Why did you decide to do this study? Adaptation and mitigation have been traditionally handled as two separate policies to combat climate change. We wanted to explore whether adaptation and mitigation can or should be considered together, because the implementation of the two policies takes place at different scales and the goals of the two climate policies are often considered distant from each other. We approached this question with a systematic literature review, because although such reviews are common in other research fields such as health sciences, there are only a few examples in social and environmental sciences. Ours was the first systematic analysis on how the interrelationships have been studied across different research fields and how these studies have conceptualized the issue.
Cities are at the forefront of climate policy making and climate impacts. The United Nation Headquarters complex in New York turns out their lights in observance of “Earth Hour,” in 2015. Credit: John Gillespie via Flickr
What were the major findings of your study? What was new or unique? We found that cities in particular should consider adaptation and mitigation together, because cities are in the forefront of climate policy making and urban actors have to negotiate trade-offs between the two climate policies across multiple scales. We found the highest number of publications on interrelationships between adaptation and mitigation from the field of urban studies.
Our systematic review provides knowledge on how synergies can be identified and conflicts avoided across different urban sectors and scales which is valuable for urban decision makers and planners when they have to consider climate policy making and planning practices.
Why are cities important when researching climate change adaptation and mitigation? Our systematic review reveals that there is an increasing interest to study the interrelationships especially in cities, which face challenges of global change both in developing and developed countries. Especially under limited resources, integrated adaptation and mitigation strategies can provide a possibility to increase efficiency of cities’ responses to climate change.
A green wall in Paris shows just one example of building innovations to help mitigate climate change. Credit: Mia Landauer 2013
What are the major conflicts and synergies you identified? At the organizational scale, the trade-offs and conflicts we found between adaptation and mitigation showed up especially in urban policy and administrative processes, and allocation of resources. In practice, conflicts appear especially when there are competing land uses such as between public and private land. We also identified a number of synergies, which are indications of positive interrelationships. In practice, synergies can be found particularly in the building, infrastructure and energy sectors, with examples ranging from passive building design to urban greening and alternative energy options. In order to enhance synergies, changes in regulations and legislation, policy and planning innovations, raising awareness and cooperation between different actors and sectors should be considered.
How can this information be applied for policy making? Integration of adaptation and mitigation can reduce vulnerability to climate change and help to implement climate policy and planning in a resource-efficient manner. Our analysis identified many opportunities that can be gained from integration of adaptation and mitigation. Especially in cities we find that it can be beneficial for decision makers and planners to consider adaptation and mitigation policies together, in order to avoid conflicts in planning practices and negotiate difficult trade-offs.
Reference Landauer M, Juhola S, Soederholm M (2015) Inter-relationships between adaptation and mitigation: a systematic literature review. Climatic Change, Article in press (Published online 8 April 2015) http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10584-015-1395-1
Note: This article gives the views of the interviewee, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Anne Goujon, Research Scholar, IIASA World Population Program
Today, Catholics are one of the fastest-growing religious affiliations in North America, because of migration and higher fertility levels—for example, the fertility of Catholic women in the USA is 12% higher than that of the Protestants. Could Catholics become the largest religious group in North America?
In a new book chapter that I wrote with Éric Caron Malenfant and Vegard Skirbekk, we projected the future religious landscape of the USA and Canada, based on a range of scenarios with different combinations of hypotheses regarding future changes of fertility, conversion and secularization rates, and migration.
Based on our projections, the answer is no, North America would not be relative majority Catholic by the middle of the century. But by 2062, it would be a near-tie for the largest religious group in the country: our projections of the religious composition of Canada and the U.S. reveal that for most scenarios, Catholics would make up to 32% of the population, compared to 34% for Protestants.
What drives changes in religious affiliation in a population? Our projections show that the key forces are migration and religious mobility, rather than fertility levels. In fact, most of the change in the relative share of the Catholics and Protestants in North America would be due to the decline in the share of the Protestant population – especially in the USA – rather than by the increase of the share of the Catholic population, which remains quite stable. Our range of scenarios stresses that the religious switch is driven by demographic factors such as migration and the policies that affect these factors. For example, if migration to the USA from Mexico were to decrease, there would be a lower share of Catholics in North America by 2060.
In 2062, our projections show that religious diversity will increase, with growing shares of Islam, Hinduism and Buddhism, and other religions. This religious diversification would be more pronounced in Canada than in the U.S. In Canada, our projections show the share of other religions would triple according to most scenarios until the 2060s, from around 10% to around 30%, while the same share would increase from 6% to 15% in the U.S. in almost all scenarios. Unless there is a rapid shift in conversion, migration, or fertility levels, our projections show a growth in minority religions, driven mostly by continued immigration, a younger age structure, higher fertility, and low losses through secularization and conversion to other religions.
Sikh people gather at a parade in New York. The projections show shares of other religions in North America, including Buddhism, Islam, and Hinduism, increasing by 2060. Photo credit: Michela Simoncini via Flickr
What about people who leave the religion of their family, moving from a religious affiliation to no affiliation? In both countries, more than one in five adults today has a different religion than he/she had in childhood or that of his/her parents. However, in all our scenarios, the population with no religion stays more or less constant up to 2062 at around 17%. This is explained by low shares of non-affiliated persons among immigrants to the U.S. as well as low childbearing levels among non-affiliated people in both Canada and the USA.
Why do changes in the religious landscape matter? Changes in a country’s religious heterogeneity that follow demographic change may affect nations’ culture, value orientations, and policies. The religious composition of a society may also have demographic effects, including behavior and family formation decisions. North America has already witnessed significant changes to its religious make-up in recent years.
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Dan Jessie, IIASA Research Scholar, Advanced Systems Analysis Program
As policymakers turn to the scientific community to inform their decisions on topics such as climate change, public health, and energy policy, scientists and mathematicians face the challenge of providing reliable information regarding trade-offs and outcomes for various courses of action. To generate this information, scientists use a variety of complex models and methods. However, how can we know whether the output of these models is valid?
This question was the focus of a recent conference I attended, arranged by IIASA Council Chair Donald G. Saari and the Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. The conference featured a number of talks by leading mathematicians and scientists who research complex systems, including Carl Simon, the founding Director of the University of Michigan’s Center for the Study of Complex Systems, and Simon Levin, Director of the Center for BioComplexity at Princeton University. All talks focused on answering the question, “Validation. What is it?”
To get a feel for how difficult this topic is, consider that during the lunch discussions, each speaker professed to know less than everybody else! In spite of this self-claimed ignorance, each talk presented challenging new ideas regarding both specifics of how validation can be carried out for a given model, as well as formulations of general guidelines for what is necessary for validation.
For example, one talk discussed the necessity of understanding the connecting information between the pieces of a system. While it may seem obvious that, to understand a system built from many different components, one needs to understand both the pieces and how the pieces fit together, this talk contained a surprising twist: oftentimes, the methodology we use to model a problem unknowingly ignores this connecting information. By using examples from a variety of fields, such as social choice, nanotechnology, and astrophysics, the speaker showed how many current research problems can be understood in this light. This talk presented a big challenge to the research community to develop the appropriate tools for building valid models of complex systems.
Overall, the atmosphere of the conference was one of debate, and it seemed that no two speakers agreed completely on what validation required, or even meant. Some recurring questions in the arguments were how closely does a model need to mirror reality, and how do we assess predictions given that every model fails in some predictions? What role do funding agencies and peer review play in validation? The arguments generated by the talks weren’t limited to the conference schedule, either, and carried into the dinners and beyond.
I left the conference with a sense of excitement at seeing so many new ideas that challenge the current methods and models. This is still a new and growing topic, but one where advances will have wide-ranging impacts in terms of how we approach and answer scientific questions.
IIASA Council Chair Don Saari: Validation: What is it?
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
By Paul Yillia, Guest Research Scholar, IIASA Water Program
Sunday March 22 2015, was World Water Day. I woke up on that beautiful spring morning in Vienna to the rising sunshine through a slit in the curtains and the lovely humming of birds returning from their winter hideouts some thousands of kilometers away. It was clear to me: winter has ended and spring is here. But there was another thing on my mind that beautiful Sunday morning: the theme of 2014 World Water Day, the water-energy nexus. How can anyone operationalize this concept?
The Water-Energy Nexus has been a hot topic in the water community this year – but how can this concept be turned to action? Poster courtesy UN Water Program
The nexus refers to the notion that global systems are strongly intertwined and heavily interdependent; that systems thinking and planning is required to address persistent global challenges in an integrated way. It is a beautiful concept, no doubt, but what do we do with it?
I joked in my travels and engagements on nexus issues last year that 2014 in my view was the most nexus year. Much has been achieved in 2014: raising awareness of the linkages between water and energy ; demonstrating that integrated approaches and solutions to water-energy issues can achieve greater economic and social impacts; identifying policy formulation and capacity development issues through which the international development community, in particular the UN system can contribute; and identifying key stakeholders and actively engaging them in the discussion on the post-2015 development agenda.
But so far, much of the work on the nexus has been on advocacy, to galvanize interests and mobilize support at the global level. As a result, the concept received widespread global attention and acceptance. The real question now is: How can we transform those commitments and interests into operational frameworks for programs and initiatives? I woke up thinking of three areas:
Supporting nexus assessment to understand the interactions between various nexus dimensions as countries review and roll out new policies. The objective will be to inspect the performance of current policies in terms of resource use efficiency and productivity in order to facilitate the technical interventions that will be required.
Strengthening consultations and engagement among relevant sectors for various nexus dimensions. This will help decision makers anticipate, plan, and manage interventions collectively and to re-think policies and strategies to deal effectively with a range of complex interactions that are interlinked and interdependent.
Reinforcing the enabling environment to facilitate the transitions that are required. This will require action to support key institutions, policy transitions and facilitating public/private funding mechanisms and investment frameworks that are required for nexus interventions.
How do we do this? First, we need to understand the interactions for a given unit of management. It could a country, a river basin, a municipality, a region or sub-region. Then we need to get various spheres of interest engaged in constructive dialogue, both in planning and in resource allocation and utilization. And probably even more importantly we need to provide the institutional, financial, and human capacity requirements to turn ideas into actions.
The challenges are huge in some regions but progress can be achieved with significant multiple gains if we get the assessments right, if we can get key sector actors to continuously talk to each other, and if are able to strengthen the enabling environment to facilitate actions. We need to act before the interest we have generated in the last couple of years diminishes.
Water and energy are inextricably linked – the “water-energy nexus.” Yillia and other researchers in IIASA’s Water program aim to bring a holistic view to the subject. Photo Credit: Kali Gandaki dam, Asian Development Bank
Note: This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of the Nexus blog, nor of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis.
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