Transformation, Adaptation and Mitigation for a 1.5 degree Global Warming

This year we run the 10^th edition of the BC3-UPV/EHU Summer School on Climate Change that started in July 2010, when the international community was in the search of a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, following a non-binding Copenhagen Accord put forth in 2009. Since then, the Summer School has covered a wide range of topics from an interdisciplinary perspective and has closely followed the international negotiations on climate change. Two years ago, the Summer School focused on the factors behind the paradigm shift in international policymaking, which eventually led to the Paris Agreement. Then, the US government’s decision to back out the agreement led to a “climate of uncertainty” that constituted the main topic discussed in last year’s edition. This year the debate is spurred by the landmark report by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on October 2018 stating that urgent action has to be taken in the next twelve years for global warming to be kept to a maximum of 1.5°C in order to avoid catastrophic environmental and economic consequences.

In recent years, there is mounting evidence that current production and consumption patterns and policies are conducting the global economy to cross critical ecological planetary boundaries and that important social, economic and institutional transitions will have to take place. Growing recognition of the need for rapid and substantial change to address global warming has led to the emergence of the concept of transformation. The scale of the challenge has generated terms such as The Great Transition and The Great Transformation, although we still lack a shared understanding amongst the very diverse social agents on what those changes will mean or require. Thus, the first day of the Summer School will help expand our thinking and open up the dialogue about transitions and what it means to reshape the way in which people live and contribute to climate stabilization.

Another lesson learned by the international scientific community in the past few years is that special attention needs to be paid to the impacts of climate change on cities and their unique mitigation and adaptation challenges and opportunities. Such is the level of consensus in this matter that this special focus will be present in all IPCCs 6^th Assessment Report processes and a Special Report on Climate Change and Cities will be included in the 7^th Assessment Report (2023-2028). Thus, the second day of the Summer School will deal with adaptation strategies in cities.

Finally, the third and last day of the Summer School will focus on instrument choice, design and implementation of accelerated mitigation policies for limiting global temperature rise to 1.5 ºC.