Political Futures in Climate Scenarios (PoliClim)

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Elmar Kriegler; Privatdozentin Dr. Julia Leininger
• Subject Area: Political Science ; Economic Policy, Applied Economics
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 558451921

Political science research has much to offer to improve the modelling of climate scenarios. In order to design robust, evidence-based policies addressing climate change and pursuing sustainable development within planetary boundaries, realistic long-term scenarios are needed. The current state of the art of climate scenario research, however, underestimates the importance of socio-political factors. Quantitative climate policy scenarios are usually generated with Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) that translate socio-economic trends and policies into projections of greenhouse gas emissions over the 21st century. In this way they show possible futures but do not predict the future. Even though political institutions are a key factor interrelated with economic development, climate protection and sustainability, they have not been captured quantitatively by IAMs and associated scenario modelling efforts, including the widely-used Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP). This is a glaring omission as climate change scenario research is a key input to the policy-oriented assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Although modelling communities have begun to assess the political-institutional feasibility of their scenarios, they do not use established theories, concepts, and indicators from governance and regime research in political science, nor do they integrate institutional factors into their models. However, this is particularly relevant because possible futures are only realistic if they are theory- and evidence based. The proposed project (PoliClim) aims at improving climate change scenario research by connecting political science research with integrated assessment modelling. Based on our prior work, it develops a model, which projects possible future trajectories of political institutions (accountability, rule of law and institutional capacity) for a set of different scenarios based on the SSP framework. PoliClim further establishes an interface to use these projections in the widely used REMIND (REgional Model for INvestments and Development) model developed by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK), linking political institutions to key transformation dynamics of the energy-economic system. PoliClim will explore how the quantitative integration of political institutions affects different future scenarios, allowing for an evaluation of political institutions as either enabler of or barrier for the transformation towards sustainability. In addition to this quantitative approach, PoliClim develops political extensions of existing scenario narratives, based on both theoretical and conceptual considerations and the empirical results of our modelling effort. Overall, PoliClim takes a new step in advancing the integration of political factors into widely used climate mitigation scenarios. It therewith positions political science in climate modelling and contributes to more reliable and usable scenario.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants