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

=== Box 4.5 | South Africa’s National Development Plan ===

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South Africa adopted its first National Development Plan (NDP) in 2011 ( [[#NPC--2011|NPC 2011]] ), the same year in which the country adopted climate policy ( [[#RSA--2011|RSA 2011]] ) and hosted COP17 in Durban. [[IPCC:Wg3:Chapter:Chapter-5|Chapter 5]] of the NDP addresses environmental sustainability in the context of development planning, and specifically ‘an equitable transition to a low-carbon economy’ ( [[#NPC--2011|NPC 2011]] ). The chapter refers explicitly to the need for a just transition, protecting the poor from impacts and any transitional costs from emissions-intensive to low-carbon. The plan proposes several mitigation measures, including a carbon budgeting approach, reference to Treasury’s carbon tax, use of various low-carbon options while maintaining energy security, and the integrated resource plan for electricity. The NDP refers to coal in several chapters, in some places suggesting additional investment (including new rail lines to transport coal and coal to liquids),

Box 4.5

in others decommissioning coal-fired power ‘procuring at least 20,000 MW of renewable electricity by 2030, importing electricity from the region, decommissioning 11,000 MW of ageing coal-fired power stations and stepping up investments in energy-efficiency’ ( [[#NPC--2011|NPC 2011]] : p. 46). Reference to environmental sustainability is not limited to [[IPCC:Wg3:Chapter:Chapter-5|Chapter 5]] – the introductory vision statement includes acknowledgement ‘that each and every one of us is intimately and inextricably of this earth with its beauty and life-giving sources; that our lives on earth are both enriched and complicated by what we have contributed to its condition’ ( [[#NPC--2011|NPC 2011]] : p. 21); and the overview of the plan includes a section on climate change, addressing both mitigation and adaptation.

Looking ahead, given that different development pathways can lead to different levels of GHG emissions and to different capacities and opportunities to mitigate, there is increasing research on how to make development pathways more sustainable. Literature is also focusing on the need for a ‘new normal’ as a system capable of achieving higher quality growth while addressing multiple development objectives by focusing on ‘innovative development pathways’.

Literature suggests that if development pathways are to be changed to address the climate change problem, choices that would need to be made about development pathways would not be marginal (Stern 2009), and would require a new social contract to address a complex set of inter-linkages across sectors, classes and the whole economy ( [[#Winkler--2017b|Winkler 2017b]] ). Shifting development pathways necessitates planning in a holistic manner, rather than thinking about discrete and isolated activities and actions to undertake mitigation. Further, the necessary transformational changes can be positive if they are rooted in the development aspirations of the economy and society in which they take place ( [[#Dubash--2012|Dubash 2012]] ; [[#Jones--2013|Jones et al. 2013]] ), but they can also lead to carbon colonialism if the transformations are imposed by Northern donors or perceived as such.

Accordingly, influencing a societies’ development pathways draws upon a broader range of policies and other efforts than narrowly influencing mitigation pathways, to be able to achieve the multiple objectives of reducing poverty, inequality and GHG emissions. The implications for employment, education, mobility, housing and many other development aspects must be integrated and new ways of looking at development pathways which are low carbon must be considered (Bataille et al. 2016b; [[#Waisman--2019|Waisman et al. 2019]] ). For instance, job creation and education are important elements that could play a key role in reducing inequality and poverty in countries like South Africa and India ( [[#Winkler--2015|Winkler et al. 2015]] ; [[#Rao--2018|Rao and Min 2018]] ) while these also open up broader opportunities for mitigation.

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==== 4.3.2.5 New Tools Are Needed to Pave and Assess Development Pathways ====

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Relative to the literature on mitigation pathways described in 4.2.5 and in 4.3.3, the literature on development pathways is limited. The climate research community has developed the Shared Socio-economic Pathways (SSPs) that link several socio-economic drivers including equity in relation to welfare, resources, institutions, governance and climate mitigation policies in order to reflect many of the key development directions ( [[#O’Neill--2014|O’Neill et al. 2014]] ). In most modelling exercises however, development remains treated as an exogenous input. In addition, models may capture only some dimensions of development that are relevant for mitigation options, thereby not capturing distributional aspects and not allowing consistency checks with broader developmental goals ( [[#Valadkhani--2016|Valadkhani et al. 2016]] ). Quantitative tools for assessing mitigation pathways could be more helpful if they could provide information on a broader range of development indicators, and could model substantively different alternative development paths, thereby providing information on which levers might shift development in a more sustainable direction.

Doing so requires new ways of thinking with interdisciplinary research and use of alternative frameworks and methods suited to deeper understanding of change agents, determinants of change and adaptive management among other issues ( [[#Winkler--2018|Winkler 2018]] ). This includes, inter alia, being able to examine enabling conditions for shifting development pathways ( [[#4.4.1|Section 4.4.1]] ); re-evaluating the neo-classical assumptions within most models, both on the functioning of markets and on the behaviour of agents, to better address obstacles on the demand side, obstacles on the supply side and market distortions ( [[#Ekholm--2013|Ekholm et al. 2013]] ; [[#Staub-Kaminski--2014|Staub-Kaminski et al. 2014]] ; [[#Grubb--2015|Grubb et al. 2015]] ) improving representation of issues related with uncertainty, innovation, inertia and irreversibility within the larger development contexts, including energy access and security; improving the representation of social and human capital, and of social, technological and governance innovations ( [[#Pedde--2019|Pedde et al. 2019]] ).

Tools have been developed in that direction, for example in the Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios (MAPS) community ( [[#La%20Rovere--2014b|La Rovere et al. 2014b]] ), but need to be further mainstreamed in the analysis. Back-casting is often a preferred modelling approach for assessment aiming to align national development goals with global climate goals like CO 2 stabilisation. Back-casting is a normative approach where modellers construct desirable futures and specify upfront targets and then find out possible pathways to attain these targets (IPCC et al. 2001). Use of approaches like back-casting are useful not only in incorporating the long term national development objectives in the models, but also evaluating conflicts and synergies more effectively ( [[#van%20der%20Voorn--2020|van der Voorn et al. 2020]] ). In back casting, the long-term national development objectives remain the key benchmarks guiding the model dynamics and the global climate goal is interfaced to realise the co-benefits. The models then delineate the roadmap of national actions such that the national goals are achieved with a comprehensive understanding of the full costs and benefits of low-carbon development (often including the costs of adaptation and impacts from residual climate change). Back-casting modelling exercises show that aligning development and climate actions could result in much lower ‘social cost of carbon’ ( [[#Shukla--2008|Shukla et al. 2008]] ). Back-casting does not aim to produce blueprints. Rather, it indicates the relative feasibility and the social, environmental, and political implications of different development and climate futures on the assumption of a clear relationship between goal setting and policy planning ( [[#Dreborg--1996|Dreborg 1996]] ). Accordingly, back-casting exercises are well suited for preparing local specific roadmaps like for cities ( [[#Gomi--2010|Gomi et al. 2010]] , 2011).

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