Periodic Reporting for period 1 - POLIMPACT (Enabling politically sensitive climate change impact assessments for the 21st century)
Período documentado: 2022-10-01 hasta 2025-03-31
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.
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.
Work carried out in the first reporting period has focused on (i) setting up the project’s data infrastructure; (ii) creating internal databases for global time-series empirical analyses and forecasting at various levels of spatial resolution, containing relevant indicators of political institutional characteristics, conflict exposure and severity, as well as relevant socioeconomic and climatological information; (iii) assessing how core political development factors (i.e. national institutions, armed conflict) shape countries’ vulnerability to observed climate hazards; (iv) exploring qualitative characteristics of future political development, informed by available empirical evidence, would be broadly consistent with existing SSP scenario narratives and which would enable extending these scenarios to incorporate quantitative projections of political development; and (v) developing a statistical modeling framework that enables simultaneous and endogenous estimation and projection of key socioeconomic and political variables. While the first two activities are concluded, work is ongoing on the other tasks.
The main achievement to date is the publication of research on political determinants of disaster vulnerability. While results show how better institutions (open and inclusive governance) and peace significantly reduce the risk of large displacement events following flooding, the study also revealed critical challenges in accurately predicting displacement, owing to complex causality as well as data limitations. We also have a completed a running model (v.1) that is able to simultaneously and endogenously simulate the evolution of socioeconomic development, democracy, and conflict risk that will provide the foundation for future studies. Another encouraging achievement is the agreement with PNAS to organize a special feature article collection on “Climate change and the future of peace and security” which is scheduled for publication in 2026.
The main achievement to date is the publication of research on political determinants of disaster vulnerability. While results show how better institutions (open and inclusive governance) and peace significantly reduce the risk of large displacement events following flooding, the study also revealed critical challenges in accurately predicting displacement, owing to complex causality as well as data limitations. We also have a completed a running model (v.1) that is able to simultaneously and endogenously simulate the evolution of socioeconomic development, democracy, and conflict risk that will provide the foundation for future studies. Another encouraging achievement is the agreement with PNAS to organize a special feature article collection on “Climate change and the future of peace and security” which is scheduled for publication in 2026.