ID: 1807
Presenting Author: Bryan Jenkins
Session: 572 - Fit For Future and Act at Present: Impact Assessment for Leveraging Challenges and Opportunities from Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation
Status: pending
Paper shows how cumulative impacts of global greenhouse gas emissions can be integrated with regional sustainability transition strategies and climate resilient development at project scale
The paper sets out how cumulative impacts of greenhouse gas emissions at global scale can be integrated with regional sustainability transition strategies and with climate resilient development at project scale. At the global scale, the work of the IPCC constitutes a cumulative assessment of greenhouse gas emissions for a range of future development scenarios. IPCC reports provide the scientific basis for UNFCCC policy development by its member countries. The Paris Agreement requires member countries to nominate their nationally determined contributions. To achieve these contributions requires transformative changes in each country. The appropriate scale for these transformations is the bioregional or socio-economic region scale. Rather than reactive strategic assessments, what is needed is proactive regional sustainability transition strategies which shift from unsustainable industries to sustainable alternatives. This requires assessing not only new industries but also closure of existing industry including their social and economic consequences. Regional sustainability transition strategies provide a framework for defining climate resilient development. It is a nested system involving linkages between different spatial scales. IPCC assessments at global scale provide the basis for setting nationally determined contributions at country scale. Achievement of nationally determined contributions is through regional sustainability transition strategies. Implementation of interventions from these strategies of climate resilient development occurs at project level.
Bryan is a sustainability strategist. He is an adjunct Professor at the Adelaide University and was chief executive of environmental agencies and director in a multidisciplinary consultancy.