IB Environmental systems and societies 6.3B Stakeholder Responses Notes

Responses to Climate Change: Mitigation Cuts Causes, Adaptation Cuts Impacts

1. This article covers 6.3B stakeholder responses: economic instruments, legislation, industry, civil society, UN governance, and personal action.
2. The core mitigation versus adaptation distinction is developed in 6.3A, so this article treats it as a given and focuses on who acts and how.
3. Responses operate at individual, community, national, and global scales.
4. Effective action needs cooperation between governments, industries, NGOs, communities, and individual consumers.
5. Responses differ in cost, speed, effectiveness, and political acceptance, so strategies must be compared across all four.

Economic Measures: Putting a Price on Carbon Shifts Behaviour

1. Carbon pricing and market-based approaches
   1. Carbon pricing puts a financial cost on emitting greenhouse gases, pushing industries toward low-emission alternatives.
   2. Carbon taxes raise the price of fossil fuels in line with their carbon content.
   3. Cap-and-trade systems set a maximum emissions limit and let firms buy or sell allowances within it.
   4. These approaches reward firms that cut emissions more efficiently than competitors, driving innovation.

Sweden's Carbon Tax: An Early Comprehensive Model

Subsidies and Incentives for Renewable Energy

1. Governments give financial incentives for solar, wind, geothermal, and bioenergy.
2. Subsidies lower upfront costs and speed up adoption of cleaner energy.
3. Subsidies narrow the cost gap, and in many markets renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels.

Tariffs and Border Adjustment Mechanisms

1. Tariffs discourage imports of carbon-intensive goods and protect low-carbon domestic industry.
2. Border carbon adjustments, such as the EU's CBAM, penalise products from countries with weak climate laws.
3. This reduces carbon leakage, where emissions simply move abroad instead of falling.

Legislative Measures: Laws Set Binding Rules Markets Alone Cannot

1. National laws and regulations
   1. Governments enforce fuel efficiency standards, renewable energy mandates, pollution limits, and building efficiency codes.
   2. Effective legislation sets clear long-term targets and coordinates action across sectors.

California's Cap-and-Trade System: Emissions Fell Alongside Other Policies

Clean Energy Standards

1. Clean energy standards require a set percentage of electricity to come from renewable sources.
2. They pull investment into wind, solar, and hydropower.

National Adaptation Strategies

1. The structural and non-structural taxonomy of adaptation is developed in 6.3A, so here we focus on national strategies as a government response.
2. National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) are the UNFCCC instrument through which Least Developed Countries (LDCs) identify urgent, immediate adaptation needs.
3. The current forward-looking instrument is the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which addresses medium- and long-term needs.
4. These plans channel international funding and guide national policy in sectors like agriculture, water, health, and coastal protection.

Industry and Corporate Responses: Big Emitters With Big Leverage

1. Corporate mitigation strategies
   1. Industry drives major emissions, especially in energy, transport, manufacturing, construction, and agriculture.
   2. Switching to renewable energy cuts reliance on fossil fuels.
   3. Improving energy efficiency in buildings, transport, and production lines.
   4. Electrifying transport fleets.
   5. Deploying low-carbon technologies to reduce process emissions.
   6. Using carbon offsets such as reforestation or carbon capture and storage.

Corporate Adaptation Strategies

1. Businesses face climate risks such as supply chain disruption, extreme weather damage, and resource shortages.
   1. Relocating production away from hazard areas.
   2. Increasing supply chain resilience by diversifying suppliers.
   3. Designing climate-resistant infrastructure.
   4. Investing in insurance, risk assessments, and disaster planning.

Challenges for Industry

1. Some industries resist climate policy over economic costs, short-term profit motives, or fear of competitive disadvantage.
   1. Transitioning to renewable energy demands high upfront investment.
   2. It requires workforce retraining.
   3. It means replacing existing technology.
   4. It needs planning beyond typical corporate timeframes.

NGO, Community and Civil Society Responses: Action Beyond the State

1. The role of NGOs in climate governance
   1. NGOs raise awareness, conduct research, run community projects, and lobby global policy.
   2. They expose gaps in government action and push for climate justice for vulnerable groups.
   3. They coordinate local adaptation projects like rainwater harvesting, reforestation, and community education.
   4. International NGOs such as Greenpeace, WWF, and Friends of the Earth push for stronger global commitments.

Community-Led Mitigation and Adaptation

1. Communities act through local renewable projects, sustainable agriculture, urban greening, and ecosystem restoration.
2. Local adaptation includes raised housing, local flood defences, and community seed banks for resilient crops.
3. Indigenous communities contribute traditional ecological knowledge that strengthens ecosystems and farming systems.
4. Community-scale action matters because climate impacts are felt locally even when caused globally.

United Nations and Global Governance: The Bodies Behind Climate Action

The UNFCCC: The Framework for Negotiation

1. The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) coordinates global efforts to stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations at safe levels.
2. It gives countries a framework to negotiate emissions cuts and adaptation support.
3. It aims to keep climate action from threatening food production, ecosystem functioning, or sustainable development.
4. It supports capacity-building, finance, and technology transfer for LICs and climate-vulnerable nations.
5. It mandates global monitoring of emissions, progress reporting, and multinational policy.

The IPCC: The Scientific Assessment Body

1. The IPCC assesses climate research and provides scientific consensus on causes, vulnerabilities, and projections.
2. It publishes Assessment Reports (AR) every five to seven years summarising peer-reviewed evidence.
3. Its reports guide COP negotiations, national strategies, and adaptation frameworks.
4. It runs no experiments of its own; it synthesises thousands of studies.
5. The Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) stresses rising climate extremes, rapid warming, and growing global risk.

COP Summits: Where Parties Negotiate

1. COP summits are annual gatherings of all UNFCCC member states to negotiate policy and review progress.
2. Each COP evaluates national contributions, climate finance, technology, and adaptation needs.
3. COP agreements coordinate global emission cuts, finance, and cross-border adaptation.
4. COP27 (Sharm El-Sheikh, 2022) stressed deep, immediate, sustained emission cuts and a required 43 percent cut in global emissions by 2030.
5. COP decisions map long-term pathways toward net-zero emissions, climate-resilient development, and renewable expansion.

International Agreements: From Kyoto to Paris

1. International agreements strengthen cooperation and set shared responsibilities.
2. The Kyoto Protocol (1997) set binding targets for industrialised countries but had limited impact because it covered only a minority of global emissions and major emitters were absent.
   1. The US never ratified Kyoto and Canada later withdrew, weakening its reach.
3. The Doha Amendment (2012) extended Kyoto with new targets, but global impact stayed limited.
4. The Paris Agreement (2015) replaced Kyoto and requires all parties to submit Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs).
   1. Paris aims to hold warming well below 2°C, ideally 1.5°C.
5. These agreements provide structure for finance, carbon markets, adaptation, and transparency.

Ethics of Differentiated Responsibility

IPCC Emissions Scenarios: Different Choices Lead to Different Futures

1. Future emissions depend on economic growth, population, technology, and political choices.
2. Because of this uncertainty, the IPCC models a range of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs).
3. Each pathway maps to a level of radiative forcing, the extra energy trapped by greenhouse gases.
4. Scenarios help governments plan mitigation and assess risk under different warming levels.

The Five SSP Emissions Scenarios

Implications of the SSP Scenarios

1. Temperature and sea-level rise
   1. SSP1-1.9 and SSP1-2.6 keep warming below 2°C, reducing extreme weather risks.
   2. SSP2-4.5 and SSP3-7.0 bring 2.5°C to 4°C of warming, driving frequent heatwaves and droughts.
   3. SSP5-8.5 pushes warming above 4°C, causing multi-metre sea-level rise and ecosystem collapse.
2. Economic and social impacts
   1. Low-emission pathways bring green-energy growth and reduced climate damages.
   2. The middle pathway brings moderate impacts, with some regions adapting better than others.
   3. High-emission pathways bring food shortages, water crises, mass migration, and economic instability.
3. Policy and global cooperation
   1. Low-emission pathways require net-zero policies, carbon pricing, and strong international cooperation.
   2. High-emission pathways reflect policy failures, weak governance, and fossil fuel dependence.

Projected Climate Impacts Across Scenarios

1. Higher warming means more frequent and intense climate extremes.
2. High-latitude regions warm faster than the tropics, and land warms faster than oceans.
3. Low-lying coasts face severe sea-level rise, bringing flooding, erosion, and displacement.
4. An intensified water cycle raises both flood risk and drought severity.
5. Oceans face marine heatwaves, coral bleaching, acidification, and falling oxygen levels.
6. Permafrost thaw releases methane, which accelerates warming.
7. Extreme events threaten food security, health, and economic stability.

Why Scenario Modelling Matters

1. Scenarios guide long-term planning for coastal defence, water, agriculture, and health.
2. They test whether current commitments meet the 1.5°C to 2°C targets.
3. They reveal adaptation deficits and emission gaps.
4. They inform stronger commitments at future COP summits.
5. They show the urgency of early action, since delay raises the cost of staying within safe limits.

Personal and Behavioural Responses: What Individuals Can Change

Individual Mitigation Choices

1. Individuals cut emissions by lowering energy use, using public transport, switching to renewables, and reducing waste.
2. Shifting to low-carbon diets (less beef and lamb) sharply cuts a personal footprint.
3. People drive wider change by supporting sustainable companies, voting for climate policy, and joining community programmes.
4. Home retrofitting, efficient appliances, and low-carbon heating cut household emissions.

Personal Adaptation Measures

1. Individuals adapt by improving household cooling, securing water, and preparing for climate risks.
2. Community-scale adaptation includes neighbourhood cooling, tree planting, and flood preparedness.
3. Personal adaptation builds resilience, especially where heatwaves, water scarcity, or storms are worsening.