Safe and Social Living: the individual operating space in the context of Climate Change

鉴于人类世持续的气候变化和更广泛的人类影响，已经作出了几项努力，以确定对于一个资源有限的星球来说，什么可以被认为是可持续的。人类世这种生态天花板或阈值的工作包括行星边界和倾倒元素的工作，这些元素定义了安全的工作空间。环境可持续发展目标(SDGs)指出了国际社会将其限制在这样的范围内的雄心。与此同时，世界上许多地区仍然不发达，许多地区仍然生活在恶劣的环境中。有几个框架可用于评估在实现发展目标方面取得的进展，包括社会可持续发展目标和视具体情况而定的体面生活标准，它们界定了实现基本人类福祉的条件。目前对这种可持续发展在气候变化背景下对长期社会经济发展情景的不同预测的理解有限。特别是，在多大程度上，实现基本需求和发展与呆在安全的作业空间内是竞争的。分析这种竞争的程度，以及富人过度使用资源的影响，是具有伦理和分配影响的研究的关键部分。成功的申请者将把这些概念统一到一个连贯的框架中，该框架定义了一个具有生态上限和社会基础的安全和社会生活空间。然后，申请者应确定是否有可能通过综合评估(使用国际应用系统分析研究所开发的MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM)来评估这一框架中不同层面的大小和性质，包括对上限(全球边界/临界点)和下限(体面生活水平/社会可持续发展目标)的评估。根据他们的兴趣，申请者将在这个更大的框架内确定一个利基，在学生期间重点关注，并进一步调查这个利基的安全和社交生活空间的大小和性质。例如，可以探讨对共同但有区别的责任的不同解释的再分配效应，以及不同的缓解和适应情景对生物多样性的影响。无论如何，该项目将把重点放在气候变化上。最有可能的形式是研究气候影响的影响，并通过探索这些上下限的动态性质，缓解气候变化对留在安全和社会生活空间内的挑战。通过将气候影响纳入综合评估模型框架，可以探讨气候影响对体面生活可获得性的影响。这意味着需要探索自然环境和社会之间的相互作用(例如适应能力)，以便在个人层面上获得洞察力。或者，可以探索气候变化的不同模型表示的影响。

In the light of continuing climate change and the wider effects of humanity in the Anthropocene, several efforts have been made to identify what can be considered sustainable for a planet with limited resources. Work on such ecological ceilings or thresholds in the Anthropocene includes the work on Planetary Boundaries and Tipping Elements, which define a safe operating space. The environmental sustainable development goals (SDGs) point out the ambition of the global community to stay within such limits. At the same time, many regions in the world are still underdeveloped and many still live in undesirable circumstances. Several frameworks for assessing progress towards goals of development exist, including the social SDGs and the context-dependent decent living standards, which define conditions for achieving basic human wellbeing. The current understanding of such sustainable development for different projections of long-term socio-economic development scenarios in the context of climate change is limited. Especially, the extent to which achieving basic needs and development are in competition with staying within a safe operating space. Analysing the degree of this competition, in conjunction with the implications of excess resource use of the affluent, is a critical strand of research carrying ethical and distributional implications. The successful applicant would unify these concepts into a coherent framework that defines a safe and social living space, with an ecological ceiling and social foundation. Then, the applicant should identify the possibilities for assessing the size and nature of the different dimensions in this framework by means of integrated assessment (using MESSAGEix-GLOBIOM developed by the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis), both for upper (planetary boundaries / tipping points) and lower thresholds (decent living standards / social sustainable development goals). Based on their interest, the applicant will identify a niche within this larger framework to focus on during the studentship, and further investigate the size and nature of the safe and social living space for this niche. For instance, redistribution effects of different interpretations of common but differentiated responsibilities could be explored, as well as implications of different mitigation and adaptation scenarios for biodiversity. In any case, the studentship will have a strong focus on climate change. Most likely this would be in the form of researching the effects of climate impacts and mitigating climate change on the challenge of staying within the safe and social living space, by exploring the dynamic nature of these upper and lower boundaries. The implications of climate impacts on the attainability of decent living can be explored, by incorporating climate impacts into an integrated assessment modelling framework. This means that the interactions between the natural environment and society (e.g. adaptive capacity) need to be explored in a way such that insight is obtained on the level of the individual. Alternatively, the effect of different model representations of climate change could be explored.