Editing IPCC:AR6/WGIII/Chapter-4 (section)

=== 4.2.7 Obstacles to Accelerated Mitigation and How Overcoming Them Amounts to Shifts in Development Pathways ===

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As outlined in Sections 4.2.3, 4.2.4, 4.2.5 and 4.2.6 there is improved understanding since AR5 of what accelerated mitigation would entail in the coming decades. A major finding is that accelerated mitigation pathways in the near to mid-term appear technically and economically feasible in most contexts. Chapter 4, however, cannot stop here. Section 4.2.2 has documented an important policy gap for current climate pledges, and Cross-Chapter Box 4 in this chapter shows an even larger ambition gap between current pledges and what would be needed in the near term to be on pathways consistent with below 2°C, let alone 1.5°C. In other words, while the implementation of mitigation policies to achieve updated NDC almost doubles the mitigation efforts, and notwithstanding the widespread availability of the necessary technologies, this doubling of effort merely narrows the gap to pathways consistent with 2°C by at most 20%.

Obstacles to the implementation of accelerated mitigation pathways can be grouped in four main categories (Table 4.10). The first set of arguments can be understood through the lens of cost-benefit analysis of decision-makers, as they revolve around the following question: Are costs too high relative to benefits? More precisely, are the opportunity costs – in economics terms, what is being forfeited by allocating scarce resources to mitigation – justified by the benefits for the decision-maker (whether individual, firm, or nation)? This first set of obstacles is particularly relevant because accelerated mitigation pathways imply significant effort in the short-run, while benefits in terms of limited warming accrue later and almost wholly to other actors. However, as discussed in Sections 3.6 and 4.2.6, mitigation costs for a given mitigation target are not carved in stone. They strongly depend on numerous factors, including the way mitigation policies have been designed, selected, and implemented, the processes through which markets have been shaped by market actors and institutions, and nature of socially- and culturally-determined influences on consumer preferences. Hence, mitigation choices that might be expressed straightforwardly as techno-economic decisions are, at a deeper level, strongly conditioned by underlying structures of society.

A second set of likely obstacles in the short-term to accelerated mitigation revolves around undesirable distributional consequences, within and across countries. As discussed in [[#4.2.6.3|Section 4.2.6.3]] , the distributional implications of climate policies depend strongly on their design, the way they are implemented, and on the context into which they are inserted. Distributional implications of climate policies have both ethics and equity dimensions, to determine what is desirable/acceptable by a given society in a given context, notably the relative power of different winners and losers to have their interests taken into account, or not, in the relevant decision-making processes. Like costs, distributional implications of accelerated mitigation are rooted in the underlying socio-political-institutional structures of a society.

A third set of obstacles are about technology availability and adoption. Lack of access even to existing cost-effective mitigation technologies remains an important issue, particularly for many developing countries, and even in the short-term. Though it relates most directly to techno-economic costs, technology availability raises broader issues related to the socio-technical systems within which innovation and adoption are embedded, and issues of technology availability are inherently issues of systemic failure ( [[IPCC:Wg3:Chapter:Chapter-16#16.3|Section 16.3]] ). The underlying legal, economic and social structures of the economy are central to the different stages of socio-transition processes (Cross-Chapter Box 12 in Chapter 16).

The last set of obstacles revolves around the unsuitability of existing structures to accelerated mitigation. We include here all forms of established structures, material (e.g., physical capital) or not (institutions, social norms, patterns of individual behaviour), that are potentially long-lived and limit the implementation of accelerated mitigation pathways. Typically, such structures exist for reasons other than climate change and climate mitigation, including the distribution of power among various actors. Modifying them in the name of accelerated climate mitigation thus requires to deal with other non-climate issues as well. For example, resolving the landlord-tenant dilemma, an institutional barrier to the deployment of energy efficiency in building, opens fundamental questions on private property in buildings.

Acommon thread in the discussion above is that the obstacles to accelerated mitigation are to a large degree rooted in the underlying structural features of societies. As a result, transforming those underlying structures can help to remove those obstacles, and thus facilitate the acceleration of mitigation. This remark is all the more important that accelerated mitigation pathways, while very different across countries, all share three characteristics: speed of implementation, breadth of action across all sectors of the economy, and depth of emission reduction achieving more ambitious targets. Transforming those underlying structures amounts to shifting a society’s development pathway (Figure 4.6). In the following Sections 3 and 4, we argue that it is thus necessary to recast accelerated mitigation in the broader context of shifting development pathways, and that doing so opens up additional opportunities to (i) overcome the obstacles outlined above, and also (ii) combine climate mitigation with other development objectives.

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[[File:d47d99310cc0bb9d7395361912ca4344 IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Figure_4_6.png]]

'''Figure 4.6 | Obstacles to mitigation (top panel) and measures to remove these obstacles and enable shift in development pathways''' '''(lower panel).'''

'''Table 4.10 | Objections to accelerated mitigation and where they are assessed in''' '''the WG3 report.'''

{| class="wikitable"
|-
! Category

! Main dimensions

! Location in AR6 WGIII report where objection is assessed and solutions are discussed

|-
| Costs of mitigation

| Marginal, sectoral or macroeconomic costs of mitigation too high; scarce resources could/should be used for other development priorities; mitigation benefits are not worth the costs (or even non-existent); lack of financing

| Sections 3.6, 4.2.6, 12.2; Chapter 15, Chapter 17

|-
| Distributional implications

| Risk of job losses; diminished competitiveness; inappropriate impact on poor/vulnerable people; negative impact on vested interests

| [[#4.5|Section 4.5]] ; Chapter 5, Chapter 13, Chapter 14

|-
| Lack of technology

| Lack of suitable technologies; lack of technology transfer; unfavourable socio-political environment

| [[#4.2.5|Section 4.2.5]] , Chapter 16

|-
| Unsuitable ‘structures’

| Inertia of installed capital stock; inertia of socio-technical systems; inertia to behaviour change; unsuitable institutions

| [[IPCC:Wg3:Chapter:Chapter-3#3.5|Section 3.5]] ; Chapter 5, Chapter 13

|}

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