ENGAGE: Exploring National and Global Actions to reduce Greenhouse gas Emissions

The project, through Integrated Assessment Models aims to produce pathways to reduce social and political challenges to achieve Paris Agreement targets by incorporating cutting-edge social science knowledge.

In 2023, global progress towards the objectives of the Paris Agreement (PA) will be formally assessed. Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs), which combine human and earth systems to help understand how key aspects of society may evolve in the future and how they might interact with a changing climate, have played an important role in identifying pathways that link strategies for achieving long-term goals with near-term actions and milestones.

ENGAGE will use IAMs to produce a new generation of pathways that incorporate cutting-edge social science knowledge to reduce social and political challenges to achieving the Paris Agreement. Such global and national pathways will transparently:

• Investigate the timing of net-zero emissions (a key target in the PA which corresponds to the time when global temperature peaks);
• Accurately reflect the climate policy landscape at national levels; and
• Incorporate potential architectures of international climate cooperation and input from key stakeholders.

The following approach will be used

• Knowledge co-production will be achieved through an iterative stakeholder dialogue process that will include workshops, surveys and frequent interactions and feedback among scientists, policy makers, civil society, the private sector, and other key stakeholders. ENGAGE will be inclusive of major emitters and selected developing countries which will ensure the credibility and legitimacy of the scientific and policy insights.
• ENGAGE will also address a historical shortcoming of IAM-based pathways insufficient attention to social, political, and certain technological constraints and enablers of mitigation efforts — by developing and operationalizing the concept of multidimensional feasibility of decarbonisation policies and pathways. To accomplish this, ENGAGE will utilize empirical analysis, stakeholder dialogue, and conceptual insights from the social sciences to develop a tool which will subsequently be used to assess and improve the feasibility of decarbonisation pathways.
• ENGAGE will quantify avoided climate change impacts through analysis of the exposure and associated costs for individual sectors and regions to climate change at different levels of and timing for global peak temperature. A particular focus will be on quantifying the benefits (or trade-offs) of climate policies on biodiversity, food, poverty, water, air quality, health, and employment, particularly for vulnerable populations.

Meeting the objectives of the ENGAGE project requires multi- and inter-disciplinary expertise. Thus, the project will be carried out by a global consortium of leading Integrated Assessment Modelling (IAM) teams from both Europe and non-European countries (Brazil, India, China, Japan, USA, Russia, Korea, Mexico, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam). The non-EU countries were selected based on the amount of total emissions they contribute to the global carbon budget, and to represent different stages of development, ranging from highly developed economies to less developed countries.

ENGAGE PARTNERS:

• International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (Austria) – Project coordinator
• Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany)
• PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (Netherlands)
• Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change (Italy)
• E3 Modelling (Greece)
• Central European University (Hungary)
• COPPE, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (Brazil)
• The Energy and Resources Institute (India)
• National Institute for Environmental Studies (Japan)
• NewClimate Institute (Germany)
• Wageningen University (Netherlands)
• National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia)
• Tsinghua University (China)
• Energy Research Institute (China)
• National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation (China)
• Indian Institute of Management (India)
• Research Institute of Innovative Technology for the Earth (Japan)
• Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Korea)
• University of Seoul Industry Cooperation Foundation (Korea)
• Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology – Thammasat University (Thailand)
• International University – Vietnam National University Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)
• Bandung Institute of Technology (Indonesia)
• Jill Jaeger (Austria)
• Utrecht University (Netherlands)
• Kyoto University (Japan)