The POLIMPACT research project seeks to address critical gaps in current climate change impact assessments by incorporating political dimensions of societal vulnerability into the widely-used SSP-RCP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways-Representative Concentration Pathways) framework. Current methodologies, while having made important steps forward and resulting in important, policy-relevant insights, overlook governance and conflict as factors influencing vulnerability to climate hazards. Effectively, existing quantifications of the scenario drivers tacitly assume that the future will be devoid of conflict and political instability. As a result, impact assessments risk producing overly optimistic projections about future societal resilience, particularly in historically unstable low-income regions. This oversight significantly limits the real-world relevance of climate impact predictions.
To overcome these limitations, POLIMPACT aims to develop new governance, conflict, and economic development scenarios that integrate political vulnerabilities, offering a more comprehensive understanding of how societies might respond to climate-related risks. By employing advanced techniques such as statistical simulations, machine learning, and expert elicitation, the project will generate politically sensitive scenario frameworks aligned with existing SSPs.
The research will focus on documenting how socioeconomic and political (including conflict) contexts shape observed climate impacts, individually and jointly, and how the evolution of these societal characteristics over time are mutually influential (i.e. endogenous). On this basis, the project will develop an endogenous statistical simulation system that provides coherent projections of governance, conflict, and economic development along each SSP pathway, in turn enabling assessing future risks to societies, such as poverty and hunger, under these improved scenarios. These efforts are expected to reveal a more nuanced understanding of climate-driven risks, with particular emphasis on the Global South, where current assessments likely underestimate challenges.
The expected impact of POLIMPACT is transformative, potentially redefining how climate change vulnerabilities are understood and addressed. Policymakers and researchers will gain access to robust tools for evaluating and mitigating risks tied to governance and political stability. By enhancing the quality of climate risk projections, this project can contribute to more effective adaptation strategies, better resource allocation, and informed policy decisions, ultimately aiding global efforts to combat climate change and its multifaceted consequences.
