The effect of education on determinants of climate change risks

Brian C. O’Neill (), Leiwen Jiang, Samir Kc, Regina Fuchs, Shonali Pachauri, Emily K. Laidlaw, Tiantian Zhang, Wei Zhou and Xiaolin Ren
Additional contact information
Brian C. O’Neill: University of Denver
Leiwen Jiang: Shanghai University
Samir Kc: Shanghai University
Regina Fuchs: Statistics Austria
Shonali Pachauri: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Emily K. Laidlaw: International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis
Tiantian Zhang: Zhejiang University
Wei Zhou: Zhejiang University
Xiaolin Ren: National Center for Atmospheric Research

Nature Sustainability, 2020, vol. 3, issue 7, 520-528

Abstract: Abstract Increased educational attainment is a sustainable development priority and has been posited to have benefits for other social and environmental issues, including climate change. However, links between education and climate change risks can involve both synergies and trade-offs, and the balance of these effects remains ambiguous. Increases in educational attainment could lead to faster economic growth and therefore higher emissions, more climate change and higher risks. At the same time, improved attainment would be associated with faster fertility decline in many countries, slower population growth and therefore lower emissions, and would also be likely to reduce vulnerability to climate impacts. We employ a multiregion, multisector model of the world economy, driven with country-specific projections of future population by level of education, to test the net effect of education on emissions and on the Human Development Index (HDI), an indicator that correlates with adaptive capacity to climate impacts. We find that improved educational attainment is associated with a modest net increase in emissions but substantial improvement in the HDI values in developing country regions. Avoiding stalled progress in educational attainment and achieving gains at least consistent with historical trends is especially important in reducing future vulnerability.

Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (8)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-020-0512-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

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:nat:natsus:v:3:y:2020:i:7:d:10.1038_s41893-020-0512-y

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/natsustain/

DOI: 10.1038/s41893-020-0512-y

Access Statistics for this article

Nature Sustainability is currently edited by Monica Contestabile

More articles in Nature Sustainability from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().