(Dis)solving the climate dilemma using win-win strategies: New directions for climate research after Paris

Ethical arguments for solving the climate dilemma

For over two decades, the interaction between science and policy on the issue of climate change has followed the following pattern. Climate research provides information on the impacts of greenhouse gas (GHG) concentrations, showing that today's emissions will place a heavy burden on future generations, including increased occurrence of extreme weather events, rising sea-levels and growing pressure on food production. Furthermore, while the developed countries are the largest emitters, developing countries are generally those that experience the severest impacts.

These results provide strong ethical arguments for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and for assisting developing countries in meeting the costs of adaptation. And indeed these arguments have been successful in bringing the climate issue onto political agendas and supporting the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process, providing the impetus for countries to agree on ambitious climate mitigation targets and set up financial transfers from developed to developing countries. The recent Paris Agreement, in which the 195 UNFCCC member states agreed on the goal to limit global warming to “well below 2°C” demonstrates a success in this pattern of science-policy interaction.

However, this pattern of science-policy interaction has been less successful in helping to deliver a globally-binding agreement on how much each country should contribute in order to reach the “well below 2°C” climate goal. If countries can agree on a goal, why can't they agree on how to reach this goal? The generally accepted answer is that reducing emissions is a) costly and slows down national economic development, and b) a global public good, where individual countries have the incentive to free-ride on the actions of others (in other words, individual countries may opt not to reduce their emissions, relying on other countries to take on this burden). Two decades of climate negotiation have shown that it is indeed very unlikely that countries are willing to sacrifice economic growth for emission reduction. A recent manifestation of this can also be found in the Paris Agreement, according to which global emission reduction remains to be based on voluntary national contributions.

Win-win strategies for dissolving the climate dilemma

An alternative way for solving this dilemma may be to dissolve it by challenging the assumption that emission reduction is costly. In other words: Can we find win-win strategies that are economically attractive today for individual countries, regions or firms, but, at the same time, contribute to climate goals? In this case, the public good dilemma would disappear, as it would then be in the interest of single players to reduce emissions and the global public good would be provided as a side effect of these individual actions.

Such win-win strategies may exist on different levels of societal organisation, ranging from individual green entrepreneurs to whole economies. For example, it has been found that an investment-oriented climate policy may switch the European economic system to a pathway with higher growth, lower unemployment and lower emissions (see research by the Global Climate Forum here). On the level of individual entrepreneurs, numerous initiatives around the world exist to find ways by which small and medium-sized enterprises can contribute to climate and sustainability goals (see, for example: groundupproject.net).

So far, however, there has been little dedicated research targeted at uncovering these win-win opportunities. The new EU-funded GREEN-WIN project aims at contributing to tackle this challenge. GREEN-WIN assembles a global transdisciplinary team of research institutes, think tanks, international and civil society organisations, finance institutions, networks, and private businesses to critically assess under which conditions win-win and green growth strategies may be realized, transferred and up-scaled and where fundamental trade-offs must be faced.

Specifically, GREEN-WIN searches for win-win opportunities that arise through integrating policies across different sectors, and advancing state-of-the-art macro-economic models in order to identify green growth pathways. At local levels, the project develops win-win strategies and enabling environments for green businesses in the areas of coastal flood risk management, urban systems, energy poverty and climate-resilient livelihoods.  Finally, GREEN-WIN investigates financial products and policies, as well as financial system reforms that redirect financial flows towards sustainability and climate action.

By calling for research aiming at identifying economic opportunities in emission reduction, this does not mean to say that we should stop doing research that supports the ethical arguments as outlined above. On the contrary, the climate problem is so serious and complex that no one can honestly claim that only one strand of research can lead to success. However, it is time to shift substantial effort from the provision of long term ethical arguments, which have received the most attention up to now, to the provisioning of short-term economic arguments, which have received little attention so far in climate research despite being at least equally important for solving the climate problem.

The same can be said about other strands of environmental research. For example, while research on alternative growth concepts and de-growth is certainly important, narrowly focusing research efforts on just this would also be a mistake. It is hard to imagine we could make any significant progress towards solving the climate problem without providing economic arguments for reducing emissions that work today for individual countries, regions and entrepreneurs. Research supporting this offers new and fascinating avenues of science-policy interactions. The GREEN-WIN project aims at contributing to this.