IB Environmental systems and societies 6.3B Stakeholder Responses Notes

Responses to Climate Change: Mitigation Cuts Causes, Adaptation Cuts Impacts

1. This article covers 6.3B stakeholder responses: economic instruments, legislation, industry, civil society, UN governance, and personal action.
2. The core mitigation versus adaptation distinction is developed in 6.3A, so this article treats it as a given and focuses on who acts and how.
3. Responses operate at individual, community, national, and global scales.
4. Effective action needs cooperation between governments, industries, NGOs, communities, and individual consumers.
5. Responses differ in cost, speed, effectiveness, and political acceptance, so strategies must be compared across all four.

Economic Measures: Putting a Price on Carbon Shifts Behaviour

1. Carbon pricing and market-based approaches
   1. Carbon pricing puts a financial cost on emitting greenhouse gases, pushing industries toward low-emission alternatives.
   2. Carbon taxes raise the price of fossil fuels in line with their carbon content.
   3. Cap-and-trade systems set a maximum emissions limit and let firms buy or sell allowances within it.
   4. These approaches reward firms that cut emissions more efficiently than competitors, driving innovation.

Sweden's Carbon Tax: An Early Comprehensive Model

Subsidies and Incentives for Renewable Energy

1. Governments give financial incentives for solar, wind, geothermal, and bioenergy.
2. Subsidies lower upfront costs and speed up adoption of cleaner energy.
3. Subsidies narrow the cost gap, and in many markets renewables are already cheaper than fossil fuels.

Tariffs and Border Adjustment Mechanisms

1. Tariffs discourage imports of carbon-intensive goods and protect low-carbon domestic industry.
2. Border carbon adjustments, such as the EU's CBAM, penalise products from countries with weak climate laws.
3. This reduces carbon leakage, where emissions simply move abroad instead of falling.

Legislative Measures: Laws Set Binding Rules Markets Alone Cannot

1. National laws and regulations
   1. Governments enforce fuel efficiency standards, renewable energy mandates, pollution limits, and building efficiency codes.
   2. Effective legislation sets clear long-term targets and coordinates action across sectors.

California's Cap-and-Trade System: Emissions Fell Alongside Other Policies

Clean Energy Standards

1. Clean energy standards require a set percentage of electricity to come from renewable sources.
2. They pull investment into wind, solar, and hydropower.

National Adaptation Strategies

1. The structural and non-structural taxonomy of adaptation is developed in 6.3A, so here we focus on national strategies as a government response.
2. National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) are the UNFCCC instrument through which Least Developed Countries (LDCs) identify urgent, immediate adaptation needs.
3. The current forward-looking instrument is the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), which addresses medium- and long-term needs.
4. These plans channel international funding and guide national policy in sectors like agriculture, water, health, and coastal protection.

Industry and Corporate Responses: Big Emitters With Big Leverage

1. Corporate mitigation strategies
   1. Industry drives major emissions, especially in energy, transport, manufacturing, construction, and agriculture.
   2. Switching to renewable energy cuts reliance on fossil fuels.
   3. Improving energy efficiency in buildings, transport, and production lines.
   4. Electrifying transport fleets.
   5. Deploying low-carbon technologies to reduce process emissions.
   6. Using carbon offsets such as reforestation or carbon capture and storage.