External publications

Policy mixes for sustainable development pathways: representation in integrated assessment models

Ines Dombrowsky / Gabriela Ileana Iacobuţă / Vassilis Daioglou / Dorothee Keppler / Bjoern Soergel / Isabelle Weindl / Elmar Kriegler
External Publications (2024)

in: Environmental Research Letters 20, article 014030

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1748-9326/ad993a
Open access

The Paris Agreement on climate change and the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development require unprecedented transformations to sustainability, while maximising synergies and minimising trade-offs between the two agendas. The policy studies and sustainability transition literatures suggest that addressing the complex policy interlinkages requires ambitious, coherent, comprehensive and credible policy mixes supported by synergistic combinations of governance modes. We investigate to which extent these assumptions are reflected in quantitative scenarios produced with integrated assessment models. As a case study, we assess a new set of target-seeking sustainable development pathway (SDP) scenarios. We scrutinise the modelling protocols and the scenario results to analyse the extent to which these modelled SDPs represent governance modes and policy instrument types and purposes, and assess the resulting policy mix characteristics. As such, we bridge the scenario modelling and policy mix literatures and provide an initial pathway appraisal. We find that the modelled SDPs use policy mixes to constrain negative side-effects of unmitigated climate measures to achieve several SDGs simultaneously. The policy mixes speak to several policy mix characteristics. However, they are only partially spelled so far and their credibility remains limited. This calls for additional policy-translation efforts.