Who could have imagined it? The IPCC working group 1 folks.

Figure from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/figures/summary-for-policymakers/figure-spm-4/

This post is by Lizzie.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is a United Nations group that helps assemble the best possible information on climate change and its impacts, and then tries to communicate it to the world. In 2017 they updated their former models for emissions scenarios (representative concentration pathways, RCPs) to include socioeconomic narratives and called them Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs, oy! The acronyms).

One has been ringing in my head for a while now. And I have been meaning to track it down, especially since some ‘who could have imagined this?’ conversations that I had months ago. I am finally making the time now as I wrap up teaching climate change ecology.

Here’s the description for SSP3 — Regional Rivalry – A Rocky Road:

A resurgent nationalism, concerns about competitiveness and security, and regional conflicts push countries to increasingly focus on domestic or, at most, regional issues. Policies shift over time to become increasingly oriented toward national and regional security issues. Countries focus on achieving energy and food security goals within their own regions at the expense of broader-based development. Investments in education and technological development decline. Economic development is slow, consumption is material-intensive, and inequalities persist or worsen over time. Population growth is low in industrialized and high in developing countries. A low international priority for addressing environmental concerns leads to strong environmental degradation in some regions.

Reference here and see also this.

There’s only five narratives. Missing from them is the chance to change which one we’re on; see also the Climate Action Tracker.