Understanding climate change as risk: a review of IPCC guidance for decision-making

Peter Tangney

Journal of Risk Research, 2020, vol. 23, issue 11, 1424-1439

Abstract: This paper examines the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) recommendation for risk-based approaches to knowing and communicating policy problems, and its suitability as a general directive for public policy decision-makers and their advisors. Although explicitly ambiguous about what a risk-based approach is or should be, this paper shows how the IPCC’s 5th Assessment Report nonetheless perpetuates ideals of objective risk calculation for rational policymaking. Policy evidence can benefit from context-appropriate problem-framings, as the IPCC concedes. Risk is one of a number of useful conceptual frames for understanding climate policy problems. This paper contributes to climate-related policymaking by describing how IPCC decision-scientists can enhance their guidance to account for the politics of policymaking. It cautions against continuing assumptions or prescriptions for the rational application of objective risk assessment to policymaking, and discusses some of the challenges faced to date by the risk-based approach when it has been applied to policymaking. The paper then briefly examines how we might better situate understandings of risk within alternative conceptual frames to advance climate change policy.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/13669877.2019.1673801 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:jriskr:v:23:y:2020:i:11:p:1424-1439

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RJRR20

DOI: 10.1080/13669877.2019.1673801

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Risk Research is currently edited by Bryan MacGregor

More articles in Journal of Risk Research from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().