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Paradigms, Models, Scenarios and Practices for strong sustainability
Abstract
A sustainable future must go beyond the domain of purely environmental issues. Unless crucial social issues, such as overconsumption, inequality, poverty, access to education, and democratic participation are addressed, policy efforts for sustainability will fail to mitigate either the drivers or impacts of the environmental crisis. While the weak sustainability paradigm holds that developments on social, economic and environmental issues are interchangeable, strong sustainability demands their combined development. Academics and practitioners should be critical towards untenable trade-offs that originate from a weak sustainability paradigm, for example green growth and decoupling. Economic, social and environmental capital provide complementary services within society and it is not possible to substitute one for another. Strong sustainability is primarily a theoretical framework with few, often small-scale, real-world implementations. Many questions remain regarding its theory, implementation and assessment. It is in this context that the Jean Monnet Excellence Center on Sustainability (ERASME) organised a symposium in December 2019 to question and advance paradigms, models, scenarios and practices that embody strong sustainability. This book is a compilation of the symposium discussions. To initiate wide ranging discussions, the following questions were raised. How do the different sciences (e.g. humanities, engineering, earth sciences) approach the question of sustainability? Are there important differences between these approaches? What are the dimensions, topics, and themes that are part of or, on the contrary, escape the discourse on sustainability? Which are the paradigms embodying the idea of strong sustainability today? Which models, methods and scientific tools consider strong sustainability? Which future scenarios embody the idea of strong sustainability the most? How to finance strong sustainability? How to assess sustainability ?
... And finally, what could be alternative modeling strategies or policies to overcome the identified shortcomings? To illustrate and concretize these questions, they are applied to global cost-benefit Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and regional Energy System Models (ESMs) that are frequently debated in academic literature or used in the policy-making process [1]. A particular focus is laid on the impact of using different discount rates on the outcomes of IAMs and ESMs, and two key European institutional climate and energy policy frameworks: the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the European Investment Bank energy lending policy. ...
... In this section, focus is primarily on IAMs and ESMs that provide an "optimized" trajectory, respectively based on either an "optimal" cost-benefit calculation or a minimization of an objective function that represents the total monetary system cost of the energy system. IAMs and ESMs can also be broadly categorized as either global long-term models that include all sectors from an institutional or societal perspective with the aim of conceptualizing possible future societal emission pathways based on economic optimization or cost-benefit assessment (Diemer, 2020), or models that focus only on the energy sector with a shorter time horizon with the aim of conceptualizing near-term development of the energy sector or analyze and evaluate private sector investment decisions or to guide public policy. Where relevant, related models are discussed as well, when they are used in the discussed modeling or policy-making processes. ...
... In the first place, there is a vivid debate within the IAM and SSP modeling community on the structure and parameterization of the models that are used to reflect on possible futures. Secondly, these global models influence the wider institutional policy debate on long-term climate policy [1]. On an institutional level, the global debate on IAM modeling takes, to a great extent, place within the Integrated Assessment Modeling Consortium (IAMC). ...
The purpose of this chapter is to synthesize models and institutional frameworks that are used to evaluate and design global, regional (EU), and national climate and energy trajecto- ries or policies, with a particular focus on the role of monetary valuation. Does using mon- etary variables and pricing in modeling obscure or illuminate a clear understanding of the energy-climate system? Do monetary-based policies help design and evaluate effective cli- mate policies? What are the key monetary parameters used in models and climate policies and to which extent do they influence the outcome? And finally, what could be alternative modeling strategies or policies to overcome the identified shortcomings? To illustrate and concretize these questions, they are applied to global cost-benefit Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) and regional Energy System Models (ESMs) that are frequently debated in academic literature or used in the policy-making process [1]. A particular focus is laid on the impact of using different discount rates on the outcomes of IAMs and ESMs, and two key European institutional climate and energy policy frameworks: the European Emission Trading Scheme (EU ETS) and the European Investment Bank energy lending policy.
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