Rebuilding trust in global climate mitigation scenarios
Global climate mitigation scenarios shape real-world policy choices of who cuts emissions, who pays, and who benefits from climate action.
A new essay published in PLOS Climate led by REMASS deputy project leader Shonali Pachauri identifies how these influential tools address equity and justice, with implications for perceptions of fairness and public trust in climate policy. The study identifies practical ways to advance equity and justice in climate mitigation pathways, supporting fair, feasible, and politically credible climate action.
The research synthesizes growing evidence that current scenarios fall short in reflecting unequal responsibilities, capacities, and development needs across regions and proposes a roadmap for integrating fairness into future climate pathways. According to lead author Shonali Pachauri the study was motivated by the need to bring together fragmented critiques of climate mitigation modeling and modelers, and to move the discussion forward on how to integrate fairness into future scenarios.
Instead of asking whether models should address equity, the authors focus on how to do so in practice.
The paper identifies three broad types of limitations in current climate mitigation scenarios:
Structural limitations relate to who builds models and whose perspectives count.
Methodological issues arise from a strong emphasis on cost efficiency, which often sidelines fairness and distributional impacts.
Epistemological limitations refer to challenges in representing justice at policy-relevant scales.
Building on this diagnosis, the authors propose practical next steps, including:
embedding effort sharing, and climate finance directly into scenarios
safeguarding decent living standards for all
expanding demand-side solutions
involving underrepresented regions and communities in scenario design
Importantly, the authors emphasize that many of the advances can be pursued within existing modeling efforts, while others point toward longer-term structural changes in the field.
Rather than offering a single technical fix, the study reframes climate mitigation modeling and scenario development itself. The authors clearly distinguish between incremental improvements and fundamentally new approaches, while recognizing the limits of models in resolving political questions of justice.
The implications of this work are significant for both policymakers and the public. For policymakers, the findings underscore that climate scenarios are not value-neutral and should be interpreted with a clear understanding of the normative assumptions embedded within them. Embedding equity directly into scenarios could help governments design fairer climate targets, estimate climate finance needs more accurately, and build stronger international cooperation grounded in shared responsibility.
Read the full paper here.