SCIENCE, ECONOMICS AND CLIMATE FUTURES

Climate science and climate economics were once separate, but researchers now increasingly integrate them to design effective mitigation and adaptation strategies

- KRISHNA GUPTA

Despite the differing worldviews of climate science and economics, considerable work over the past decade has sought to integrate the science with the economics of climate change.

The development of Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) describes four alternative pathways with different levels of greenhouse gas emissions and radiative forcing that may occur in the future. Radiative forcing refers to the difference between incoming solar radiation and outgoing infrared radiation. These pathways project a broad range of forcing in the year 2100 of 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, and 8.5 watts per metre squared.

Another framework is the Shared Socio-Economic Pathways (SSPs), developed in 2016 by climate and energy scientists in collaboration with economists. Five such SSPs were developed, namely:

SSP1 or sustainable development, which foresees few mitigation and adaptation challenges with low emission levels and low consumption. This is the ideal world.

SSP2 or middle-of-the-road development, where the mitigation and adaptation challenges are limited and socioeconomic and technological practices don't deviate too much from the past trends.