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Research work into the development and transference of methods for climate readiness and resilience by Allen et al has created impacts at every stage of the planning process. In major cities of the Global South, such as Dhaka and Maputo, this research has made visible the material practices adopted by ordinary citizens to cope with climate variability, and has provided a systematic evaluation for policymakers and funders of strategies for proofing cities at scale. In turn it has facilitated new approaches to risk and vulnerability assessment — for instance, by integrating new perspectives into Maputo city planning, supporting methodological approaches to projects by Oxfam, and helping to shape policy tools and funding with organisations such as the Department for International Development (DFID).
Our research on the economics of low carbon cities has impacted on energy and low carbon strategies and on investment decision-making in major UK cities including Leeds, Sheffield and Birmingham. It has also influenced guidance issued to local authorities by the Committee on Climate Change and the Department for Communities and Local Government, and has helped to embed strategies and targets for green growth in the next five-year plan for China. The research was voted one of the most transformative ideas to be presented at the UN climate negotiations in Durban in December 2011, and the approach is now being replicated in cities in India, Peru, Malaysia and Indonesia.
Impacts: I) Enhanced public engagement with, and understanding of, climate mitigation by individuals, delivered through two successful popular science publications and sustained bodies of media and outreach work. II) Public policy formation related to climate change mitigation.
Significance and reach: Impacts of the popular science books include >5,500 sales of a children's book (2009 - 2011) and documented household-level behaviour changes in energy usage. The European Commission issued new directives on energy saving appliances in December 2008.
Underpinned by: Research into the role of individuals in climate change mitigation, undertaken at the University of Edinburgh (2001 onwards).
This case study highlights the impact of LSE research on national and international carbon pricing policy. This includes a fundamental change in the way the UK government sets a carbon price for policy and project appraisal, and its approach to carbon trading in Europe. LSE work has also had impact beyond the UK, in particular on legislating — for the first time — policies to price carbon in strategically important countries across the world, including Australia, China, Mexico and South Korea.
Since 2005 the Agriculture and Environment Research Unit has undertaken an extensive programme of research related to mitigating the climate change impacts arising from agricultural land management policies and practices. The research findings that identified the impact on climate change of various policies, schemes and farming initiatives have been instrumental since 2008 in providing UK policy makers, farmers and their advisors with data and tools that helped to formulate improved climate change mitigation policies. They also contributed to the development of key guidance materials that supported the implementation of these policies on the farm.
Research undertaken primarily by Nicholas Stern, together with LSE colleagues, has had a significant impact on the negotiations between Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). The research has helped to bring about an agreement that rich countries should provide $100 billion a year by 2020 for adaptation to and mitigation of the effects of climate change in developing countries. It has also provided an understanding of the sources through which this sum should be raised.
Results from climate physics research at the University of Oxford have demonstrated that targets for cumulative carbon emissions, rather than greenhouse gas concentrations, are a more effective approach to limiting future climate change. This new approach and the resulting `trillionth tonne' concept have had substantial political and economic implications. Impacts since 2009 include (a) stimulus to policy developments; (b) influence on the business decisions of Shell e.g. to invest in a $1.35bn carbon capture and storage facility; and (c) significant public and media debate with a global reach.
Research undertaken at the University of Manchester (UoM) has enhanced capacity for assessing and responding to climate change impacts and risks in urban areas, by moving from basic research around user requirements to the development of scaleable decision support tools. The needs of end users have been considered from the outset, with a co-production model of research — academics working in joint enterprise with stakeholders from the public, private and third sectors — leading to enhanced take-up of the resulting ideas, tools and techniques. Impacts are based upon supporting climate change adaptation responses within planning authorities, at local, regional, national and international scales, with the web-based climate change adaptation tools, developed at UoM, now freely available to municipalities worldwide.
Lived experiences of ordinary people and how they rationalise events provides rich insights for several disciplines e.g. medicine. With climate change, whilst the value of anthropogenic activity is increasingly recognised, models based on positivist scientific rationality still dominate. What is yet unclear is how a global citizenery understands climate change through its own individual and group "lived experiences". This research is significant in that it seeks to conceptualise and theorise what is meant by the "lived experience" of climate change and how this shapes the "lay rationality" and actions of people in both the developed and the developing world.
The US government's announcement of an increase in the `social cost of carbon' (SCC) from $24 to $38 a tonne has been made on the basis of research by Richard Tol, of the University of Sussex. Regulation based on the new SCC (a measure of the damage of releasing an additional tonne of carbon into the atmosphere) initially applies to microwave ovens, where it is anticipated to save US consumers billions on their energy bills over coming decades and prevent 38 million tonnes of CO2 emissions. From June 2013, the new SCC applies to any new or revised regulation by any branch of the US government and will eventually affect a wide range of products and investments, including cars, white goods and power plants.
Tol, who works as an adviser to the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been instrumental in helping the agency to understand the economic impacts of climate change and the methods and assumptions that underpin SCC estimates. The US government's estimates of the SCC are widely used by other decision-makers in the private sector, banks and NGOs and in other countries.