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

=== 4.3.1 Framing of Development Pathways ===

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==== 4.3.1.1 What are Development Pathways? ====

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The term development pathway is defined in various ways in the literature, and these definitions invariably refer to the evolution over time of a society’s defining features. A society’s development pathway can be described, analysed, and explained from a variety of perspectives, capturing a range of possible features, trends, processes, and mechanisms. It can be examined in terms of specific quantitative indicators, such as population, urbanisation level, life expectancy, literacy rate, GDP, carbon dioxide emission rate, average surface temperature, etc. Alternately, it can be described with reference to trends and shifts in broad socio-political or cultural features, such as democratisation, liberalisation, colonisation, globalisation, consumerism, etc. Or, it can be described in a way that highlights and details a particular domain of interest; for example, as an ‘economic pathway’, ‘technological pathway’, ‘demographic pathway’, or others. Any such focused description of a pathway is more limited, by definition, than the general and encompassing notion of a development pathway.

Development pathways represent societal evolution over time, and can be assessed retrospectively and interpreted in a historical light, or explored prospectively by anticipating and assessing alternative future pathways. Development pathways, and prospective development pathways in particular, can reflect societal objectives, as in ‘low-emission development pathways’, ‘climate-resilient development pathways’, ‘sustainable development pathways’, ‘inclusive development pathway’, and as such can embed normative assumptions or preferences, or can reflect potential dystopian futures to be avoided. A national development plan ( [[#4.3.2|Section 4.3.2]] ) is a representation of a possible development pathway for a given society reflecting its objectives, as refracted through its development planning process.

One approach for exploring shifts in future development pathways is through scenarios. Some examples of scenario exercises in the literature are provided in Table 4.11.

Different narratives of development pathways can have distinct and even competing focuses such as economic growth, shifts in industrial structure, technological determinism, and can embody alternative framings of development itself (from growth to well-being, see Chapter 5), and of sustainable development in particular (Sections 1.6 and 17.1). Scenario exercises are structured undertakings to explore alternative future development pathways, often drawing on stakeholder input and accepting the deep and irreducible uncertainty inherent in societal development into the future ( [[#Schweizer--2012|Schweizer and Kriegler 2012]] ; [[#Kahane--2012|Kahane 2012]] ; [[#Raskin--2020|Raskin and Swart 2020]] ). The results of scenario explorations, including modelling exercises, thus help clarify the characteristics of a particular future pathway, in light of a particular set of assumptions and choice of indicators for assessment. Processes of developing scenarios can inform choices by decision makers of various kinds.

Scenarios are useful to clarify societal objectives, understand constraints, and explore future shifts. Scenario exercises are effective when they enable multi-dimensional assessment, and accommodate divergent normative viewpoints ( [[#Kowarsch--2017|Kowarsch et al. 2017]] ). Such processes might take into account participants’ explicit and implicit priorities, values, disciplinary backgrounds, and world views. The process of defining and describing a society’s development pathway contributes to the ongoing process of understanding, explaining and defining the historical and contemporary meaning and significance of a society. The imagination of facilitated stakeholder process combined with the rigour of modelling helps improve understanding of constraints, trade-offs, and choices. ‘Scenario analysis offers a structured approach for illuminating the vast range of possibilities. A scenario is a story, told in words and numbers, describing the way events might unfold. If constructed with rigor and imagination, scenarios help us to explore where we might be headed, but more, offering guidance on how to act now to direct the flow of events toward a desirable future’ ( [[#Raskin--2002|Raskin et al. 2002]] ). Scenario processes are valuable for the quantitative and qualitative insights they can provide, and also for the role they can play in providing a forum and process by which diverse institutions and even antagonistic stakeholders can come together, build trust, improve understanding, and ultimately converge in their objectives ( [[#Kane--2018|Kane and Boulle 2018]] ; [[#Dubash--2021|Dubash 2021]] ).

'''Table 4.11 | Prospective development pathways at global, national a''' '''nd local scale.'''

{| class="wikitable"
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! Scale

! Process and publication

! Description of development pathways

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| Global

| IPCC Special Report on Emission Scenarios (Nakicenovic et al. 2000)

| Four different narrative storylines describing relationships between driving forces and the evolution of emission scenarios over the 21st century.

|-
| Global

| Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs)

( [[#Riahi--2017|Riahi et al. 2017]] ; [[#O’Neill--2017|O’Neill et al. 2017]] )

| Five narratives describing alternative socio-economic developments, including sustainable development, regional rivalry, inequality, fossil-fuelled development, and middle-of-the-road development, using alternative long-term projections of demographics, human development, economy and lifestyle, policies and institutions, technology, and environment and natural resources.

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| Global

| Income inequality projections for SSPs ( [[#Rao--2019|Rao et al. 2019]] )

| Alternative development pathways that explore several drivers of rising or falling inequality.

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| Global

| Futures of Work

( [[#World%20Economic%20Forum--2018|World Economic Forum 2018]] )

| Eight possible visions of the future of work in the year 2030, based on different combinations of three core variables: the rate of technological change and its impact on business models, the evolution of learning among the current and future workforce, and the magnitude of labour mobility across geographies – all of which are likely to strongly influence the nature of work in the future.

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| National

| Mont Fleur Scenarios

( [[#Galer--2004|Galer 2004]] )

| Four socio-political scenarios intended to explore possible futures of a newly post-apartheid South Africa, which included three dark prophecies and one bright vision which reportedly influenced the new leadership.

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| National

| Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) ( [[#Winkler--2017|Winkler et al. 2017]] ; [[#Raubenheimer--2015|Raubenheimer et al. 2015]] )

| Mitigation and development-focused scenarios for Brazil, Chile, Peru, and Colombia, entailing linked sectoral and economy modelling including socio-economic implications, combined with intensive stakeholder engagement.

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| National

| Deep Decarbonisation Pathways (Bataille et al. 2016a; [[#Waisman--2019|Waisman et al. 2019]] )

| Mitigation-focused scenarios for sixteen countries from each country’s perspective, carried out by local institutes using national models. The common method is a tool for decision-makers in each context to debate differing concrete visions for deep decarbonisation, seek consensus on near-term policy packages, with aim to contribute to long-term global decarbonisation.

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| Local

| New Lenses on Future Cities

( [[#Shell%20Global--2014|Shell Global 2014]] )

| Six city archetypes used to create scenarios to help understand how cities could evolve through more sustainable urbanisation processes and become more efficient, while coping with major development challenges in the past.

|}

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==== 4.3.1.2 Shifting Development Pathways ====

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Development pathways evolve as the result of the countless decisions and actions at all levels of societal structure, as well due to the emergent dynamics within and between institutions, cultural norms, socio-technological systems, and the biogeophysical environment. Society can choose to make decisions and take actions with the shared intention of influencing the future development pathway toward specific agreed objectives.

The SDGs provide a lens on diverse national and local development objectives. Humankind currently faces multiple sustainability challenges that together present global society with the challenge of assessing, deliberating, and attempting to bring about a viable, positive future development pathway. Ecological sustainability challenges include reducing GHG emissions, protecting the ozone layer, controlling pollutants such as aerosols and persistent organics, managing nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, etc. ( [[#Steffen--2015|Steffen et al. 2015]] ), which are necessary to address the rising risks to biodiversity and ecosystem services on which humanity depends ( [[#IPBES--2019a|IPBES 2019a]] ). Socio-economic sustainability challenges include conflict, persistent poverty and deprivation, various forms of pervasive and systemic discrimination and deprivation, and socially corrosive inequality. The global adoption of the SDGs and their underlying indicators ( [[#UN--2017|UN 2017]] , 2018 and 2019) reflect a negotiated prioritisation of these common challenges.

Figure 4.7 illustrates the process of shifting development pathways. The lines illustrate different possible development pathways through time, some of which (shown here toward the top of the figure) remove obstacles to the adoption and effective implementation of sustainable development policies, and thus give access to a rich policy toolbox for accelerating mitigation and achieving SDGs. Other development pathways (shown here toward the bottom of the figure) do not overcome, or even reinforce the obstacles to adopting and effectively implementing sustainable development policies, and thus leave decision-makers with more limited policy toolbox ( [[#4.2.7|Section 4.2.7]] and Figure 4.6). A richer tool box enables faster, deeper and broader mitigation.

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[[File:f373c509da4dc7131ce79f5bcf0d8d24 IPCC_AR6_WGIII_Figure_4_7.png]]

'''Figure 4.7 | Shifting development pathways to increased sustainability: choices by a wide range of actors at key decision points on development pathways can reduce barriers and provide more tools to accelerate mitigation and achieve other Sustainable Dev''' '''elopment Goals.'''

The development pathways branch and branch again, signifying how a diversity of decision-makers (policymakers, organisations, investors, voters, consumers, etc.) are continuously making choices that influence which of many potential development pathways society follows. Some of these choices fall clearly within the domain of mitigation policy. For example, what level carbon price, if any, should be imposed? Should fossil fuel subsidies be removed? Most decisions, of course, fall outside the direct domain of mitigation policy. ''Shifting development pathways toward sustainability'' involves this broader realm of choices beyond mitigation policy ''per se'' , and requires identifying those choices that are important determinants of the existing obstacles to accelerating mitigation and meeting other SDGs. Addressing these choices coherently shifts the development pathway away from a continuation of existing trends.

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==== 4.3.1.3 Expanding the Range of Policies and Other Mitigative Options ====

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Shifting development pathways aims to influence the ultimate drivers of emissions (and development generally), such as the systemic and cultural determinants of consumption patterns, the political systems and power structures that govern decision-making, the institutions and incentives that guide and constrain socio-technical innovation, and the norms and information platforms that shape knowledge and discourse, and culture, values and needs ( [[#Raskin--2002|Raskin et al. 2002]] ). These ultimate drivers determine the mitigative capacity of a society.

Decision-makers might usefully consider a broader palette of policies and measures as part of an overall strategy to meet climate goals and other sustainable development goals ( [[#4.3.2|Section 4.3.2]] and Table 4.12). This is consistent with the fact that mitigation is increasingly understood to be inseparable from broader developmental goals, which can be facilitated by policy coherence and integration with broader objectives and policies sectorally and societally. This is supported by other observations that mitigation measures based on conventional climate policy instruments, such as emissions taxes or permits, price incentives such as feed-in tariffs for low-carbon electricity generation, and fuel economy standards, and building codes, which aim to influence the proximate drivers of emissions alone will not achieve the long-term goals of the Paris Agreement ( [[#Méjean--2015|Méjean et al. 2015]] ; [[#Rogelj--2016|Rogelj et al. 2016]] ; [[#IPCC--2018a|IPCC 2018a]] ; UNEP 2018). An approach of shifting development pathways to increased sustainability (SDPS) broadens the scope for mitigation.

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==== 4.3.1.4 An Approach of SDPS Helps Manage Trade-offs Between Mitigation and Other SDGs ====

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Beyond removing structural obstacles to accelerated mitigation, broadening the approach to policies that facilitate shifts in development pathways also helps manage the potential trade-offs between mitigation and other development objectives discussed in [[#4.2.7|Section 4.2.7]] .

Systematic studies of the 17 SDGs have found the interactions among them to be manifold and complex ( [[#Nilsson--2016|Nilsson et al. 2016]] ; [[#Pradhan--2017|Pradhan et al. 2017]] ; [[#Weitz--2018|Weitz et al. 2018]] ; [[#Fuso%20Nerini--2019|Fuso Nerini et al. 2019]] ). Addressing them calls for interventions affecting fundamental, interconnected, structural features of global society (International Panel on Social Progress 2018; [[#TWI2050%20–%20The%20World%20in%202050--2018|TWI2050 – The World in 2050 2018]] ), such as to our physical infrastructure (e.g., energy, water, industrial, urban infrastructure) ( [[#Waage--2015|Waage et al. 2015]] ; Adshead et al. 2019; [[#Chester--2019|Chester 2019]] ; [[#Mansell--2019|Mansell et al. 2019]] ; [[#Thacker--2019|Thacker et al. 2019]] ; ), our societal institutions (e.g., educational, public health, economic, innovation, and political institutions) ( [[#Ostrom--2010|Ostrom 2010]] ; [[#Kläy--2015|Kläy et al. 2015]] ; [[#Messner--2015|Messner 2015]] ; [[#Sachs--2019|Sachs et al. 2019]] ), and behavioural and cultural tendencies (e.g., consumption patterns, conventional biases, discriminatory interpersonal and intergroup dynamics, and inequitable power structures) ( [[#Esquivel--2016|Esquivel 2016]] ; [[#Sachs--2019|Sachs et al. 2019]] ). These observations imply that attempt to address each SDG in isolation, or as independent technical challenges, would be insufficient, as would incremental, marginal changes. In contrast, effectively addressing the SDGs is likely to mean significant disruption of long-standing trends and transformative progress to shift development pathways to meet al. the SDGs, including climate action, beyond incremental changes targeted at addressing mitigation objectives in isolation. In other words, mitigation conceived as incremental change is not enough. Transformational change has implications for equity in its multiple dimensions ( [[#Steffen--2013|Steffen and Stafford Smith 2013]] ; [[#Klinsky--2017a|Klinsky et al. 2017a]] ; [[#Leach--2018|Leach et al. 2018]] ) including just transitions ( [[#4.5|Section 4.5]] ).

Working Group II examines climate resilient development pathways (CRDP) – continuous processes that imply deep societal changes and/or transformation, so as to strengthen sustainable development, efforts to eradicate poverty and reduce inequalities while promoting fair and cross-scalar capacities for adaptation to global warming and reduction of GHG emissions in the atmosphere. Transformative action in the context of CRDP specifically concerns leveraging change in the five dimensions of development (people, prosperity, partnership, peace, planet) (AR6 WGII, Chapter 18).

[[#4.3.2|Section 4.3.2]] provides more details on the way development pathways influence emissions and mitigative capacity. [[#4.3.3|Section 4.3.3]] provides examples of shifts in development pathways, as well as of policies that might facilitate those. Cross-Chapter Box 5 in this chapter details the links between SDPS and sustainability.

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