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Discussions about the opening of science to society have led to the emergence of new fields such as sustainability science and transformative science. At the same time, the megatrend of stakeholder participation reached the academic world and thus scientific research processes. This challenges the way science is conducted and the tools, methods and theories perceived appropriate. Although researchers involve stakeholders, the scientific community still lacks comprehensive theoretical analysis of the practical processes behind their integration - for example what kind of perceptions scientists have about their roles, their objectives, the knowledge to gather, their understanding of science or the science-policy interface. Our paper addresses this research gap by developing four ideal types of stakeholder involvement in science - the technocratic, the functionalist, the neoliberal-rational and the democratic type. In applying the typology, which is based on literature review, interviews and practical experiences, we identify and discuss three major criticisms raised towards stakeholder involvement in science: the legitimacy of stakeholder claims, the question whether bargaining or deliberation are part of the stakeholder involvement process and the question of the autonomy of science. Thus, the typology helps scientists to better understand the major critical questions that stakeholder involvement raises and enables them to position themselves when conducting their research. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Reaching the Sustainable Development Goals requires a fundamental socio-economic transformation accompanied by substantial investment in low-carbon infrastructure. Such a sustainability transition represents a non-marginal change, driven by behavioral factors and systemic interactions. However, typical economic models used to assess a sustainability transition focus on marginal changes around a local optimum, whichby constructionlead to negative effects. Thus, these models do not allow evaluating a sustainability transition that might have substantial positive effects. This paper examines which mechanisms need to be included in a standard computable general equilibrium model to overcome these limitations and to give a more comprehensive view of the effects of climate change mitigation. Simulation results show that, given an ambitious greenhouse gas emission constraint and a price of carbon, positive economic effects are possible if (1) technical progress results (partly) endogenously from the model and (2) a policy intervention triggering an increase of investment is introduced. Additionally, if (3) the investment behavior of firms is influenced by their sales expectations, the effects are amplified. The results provide suggestions for policy-makers, because the outcome indicates that investment-oriented climate policies can lead to more desirable outcomes in economic, social and environmental terms.
To achieve the goal of keeping global warming well below 2 °C, private investors have to shift capital from brown to green infrastructures and technologies and provide additional green investment. In this paper, we present a game-theoretic perspective on the challenge of triggering such investments. The question of climate change mitigation is often related to the prisoner's dilemma, a game with one Nash equilibrium. However, the authors perceive investment for mitigation and adaptation as a coordination problem of selecting among multiple equilibria. To illustrate this, we model a non-cooperative coordination game, related to the stag hunt, with a brown equilibrium with lower payoffs that can be achieved single-handedly and a green equilibrium with higher payoffs that requires coordination. As multiple experiments show, in such games actors often fail to coordinate on a payoff dominant equilibrium due to uncertainty. Thus, we discuss how uncertainty could be reduced along two options: one that concerns a change in the payoff structure of the game and another that concerns subjective probabilities.
Signals for 2 degrees C
(2019)
The targets of the Paris Agreement make it necessary to redirect finance flows towards sustainable, low-carbon infrastructures and technologies. Currently, the potential of institutional investors to help finance this transition is widely discussed. Thus, this paper takes a closer look at influence factors for green investment decisions of large European insurance companies. With a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods, the importance of policy, market and civil society signals is evaluated. In summary, respondents favor measures that promote green investment, such as feed-in tariffs or adjustments of capital charges for green assets, over ones that make carbon-intensive investments less attractive, such as the phase-out of fossil fuel subsidies or a carbon price. While investors currently see a low impact of the carbon price, they rank a substantial reform as an important signal for the future. Respondents also emphasize that policy signals have to be coherent and credible to coordinate expectations.