Unpacking climate policy.

As temperatures and evidence of climate impacts mount, so too do pressures to enhance climate policy ambition and implementation. In a previous piece, I have argued that to respond to these pressures requires rebalancing focus from target setting to implementation through policy formulation and enactment. But following through on policy and its implementation brings its own challenges.

Design national framework climate laws to enable low-carbon resilient transformation.

Climate change, as noted by the recently released technical report of the "stocktake" under the United Nations negotiation process, is an "all of economy, all of society" problem. To induce change consistent with the scale and scope of this challenge, countries are increasingly creating "framework laws" on climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reports that by 2020, 56 countries had passed laws with the objective of limiting greenhouse gases, covering 53% of emissions.

Rebalance attention from global target setting toward national climate politics and policy.

Is the process of ramping up greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets as part of an "ambition cycle" working to address the global climate crisis? The first Global Stocktake (GST) of progress recently submitted by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) confirms that progress in reducing emissions is well behind what is required by science to limit global warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. What is to be done? Part of the answer may lie in rebalancing attention away from generating global pressure for ambitious target setting and toward the detailed work of shifting politics and building policies at the national level.

National climate institutions complement targets and policies.

Institutions can affect coordination, consensus, and strategy.

Climate change research and the search for solutions: rethinking interdisciplinarity.

Growing political pressure to find solutions to climate change is leading to increasing calls for multiple disciplines, in particular those that are not traditionally part of climate change research, to contribute new knowledge systems that can offer deeper and broader insights to address the problem. Recognition of the complexity of climate change compels researchers to draw on interdisciplinary knowledge that marries natural sciences with social sciences and humanities. Yet most interdisciplinary approaches fail to adequately merge the framings of the disparate disciplines, resulting in reductionist messages that are largely devoid of context, and hence provide incomplete and misleading analysis for decision-making.

Utilitarian benchmarks for emissions and pledges promote equity, climate and development.

Tools are needed to benchmark carbon emissions and pledges against criteria of equity and fairness. However, standard economic approaches, which use a transparent optimization framework, ignore equity. Models that do include equity benchmarks exist, but often use opaque methodologies.