Editorial: Evidence synthesis for accelerated learning on climate solutions

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🔬研究者:Researchers can adopt systematic review methods to synthesize climate solutions evidence, improving the quality and transparency of their reviews.

🏢実務担当者:Practitioners can use evidence syntheses to identify effective climate solutions and justify their implementation strategies.

🏛政策担当者:Policymakers can rely on rigorous evidence syntheses to design and evaluate climate policies, ensuring they are based on best available evidence.

By signing the Paris Agreement with the aim to limit global warming to well below 2°C relative to preindustrial levels, countries have committed to kickstart the age of climate solutions. This challenge should not be underestimated: It requires turning around a 270-year-old trajectory of CO2 emissions growth that started with the industrial revolution (Friedlingstein et al., 2019), and racing towards net zero emissions over the next 3–5 decades (IPCC, 2018). But that is not enough. Because anthropogenic carbon emissions have already caused consequential warming of about 1°C since preindustrial times, there is a further need to reduce vulnerabilities and adapt to climate impacts that cannot be avoided (IPCC, 2014, 2018). All parts of society and the economy will need to play their parts in the transformation towards a climate-resilient, net-zero emissions world. It requires nothing less than transformational policies at all levels of governance from local to national and international (IPCC 2014, 2018). Climate policies for mitigation and adaptation have to become the focus in science and policy if we are to have the slightest chance of living up to this challenge. Because there is no time left for trial and error and since resources for organising a transformation into a carbon-neutral world are inherently limited, decision-making on climate solutions needs to be based on the best available evidence. “Best” evidence should be rigorous, transparent, timely, efficient, and fit-for-purpose applying formal methods for evidence synthesis (Gough et al., 2017; Haddaway et al., 2020). Knowledge brokering (Pielke, 2007) on climate change is commonly undertaken through scientific assessments of the available scientific literature. Most prominently these assessments are undertaken by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Like many other global environmental assessments, IPCC assessments are diverse, large-scale, multistakeholder and intergovernmental processes (Kowarsch et al., 2017). Compared with systematic reviews and evidence (gap) maps (Saran & White, 2018), their scope is vast. IPCC assessments usually require the consideration of more or less the entire recent scientific literature on climate change that has emerged during an assessment cycle—only somewhat constrained by a government-approved outline that provides some thematic focus. Progress in IPCC assessments depends on a well-working evidence pyramid (Figure 1). There is no time within IPCC processes to systematically assess the vast amounts of primary research on climate change. The availability of rigorous evidence syntheses that assess the primary evidence is fundamental for learning (Berrang-Ford et al., 2015; Minx et al., 2017). The IPCC has made continuous progress in building up knowledge on forward-looking questions that emerge around understanding, dealing with and mitigating potentially severe, pervasive and irreversible climate impacts that could affect human and natural systems in the absence of an adequate human response. This knowledge has had a big impact on international climate policy. It is difficult to think of major milestones like the Kyoto Protocol or the Paris Agreement being achieved without the synthetic scientific inputs provided by the IPCC. Learning has been driven by structured, model-intercomparison exercises that provide the major backbone of the evidence synthesis tradition in climate change. Similar to systematic reviews, model intercomparison exercises set out clear protocols for systematically assessing evidence generated by ensembles of harmonised climate models on specific questions around climate science, impacts and vulnerability as well as mitigation and adaptation (Edwards, 2011; Eyring et al., 2016; O'Neill et al., 2016). These lines of synthetic evidence arising from model intercomparison exercises have been fundamental for progress in the science of climate change as well as IPCC assessment reports (Minx et al., 2019). However, progress on understanding climate solutions from IPCC assessments has been limited, despite climate solutions now being rolled out across the world, with varying degrees of ambition and success (Eskander & Fankhauser, 2020; Höhne et al., 2020). The root of the problem is a lack of rigorous evidence syntheses that assess progress and historical success and failures in the implementation of climate solutions (Berrang-Ford et al., 2015; Minx et al., 2017) and are designed to minimise the various sources of bias traditional literature reviews are commonly exposed to (Haddaway et al., 2020). Transparent evidence synthesis is particularly infrequent in climate research using qualitative research, largely due to the widespread perception in many social sciences that systematic approaches are highly positivist and lack the methodological flexibility needed for critical inductive inquiry. Yet qualitative research is critical for understanding the human dimensions of climate change, and we will need robust synthetic insights from the social sciences to comprehensively learn about climate solutions. Substantial work has already been undertaken to develop qualitative evidence synthesis and mixed methods synthesis methods in other topic areas dealing with complexity. There is an opportunity to adopt and adapt these systematic evidence synthesis approaches to bridge some of the epistemological concerns. Despite this, many reviews in this field frequently lack transparent methodology about their processes, and often withdraw from engaging with the broader need for generalizeable insight (Gough et al., 2017). Systematic review research, meanwhile, has struggled to respond to the scope and heterogeneity of the climate literature, in particular the central role of contextual and mediating factors in influencing climate solutions. Thus, a robust middle layer of the evidence pyramid is partially lacking. As shown in Figure 1, the result is a lack of learning in science and policy regarding what climate solutions work under what conditions, for whom, and why in climate change assessments and beyond (Berrang-Ford et al., 2015; Minx et al., 2017). It is of great importance to grow a rigorous evidence synthesis culture particularly in the social science of climate change. The Campbell Collaboration has therefore now established a new Climate Solutions Coordinating Group (CSCG) with the purpose of building a comprehensive evidence base on climate solutions. We are part of a growing international, multidisciplinary network of scholars committed to prepare and disseminate high quality systematic reviews and evidence and gap maps that help us better understand climate solutions. With our work we want to support better, evidence-based decisions by: (a) supporting rigorous synthesis of evidence on key questions; (b) further improving the quality of climate change research through critical appraisal of primary research; and (c) improving the efficiency of the scientific process through enhanced oversight of, and less duplication in, secondary research efforts. We further believe that our work strengthens the IPCC and other climate change assessments by supporting the completion of its evidence pyramid (see Figure 1). We are particularly interested in learning about what climate solutions work well under what conditions, for whom, and why. Climate change mitigation and adaptation solutions are the end-points of our interest, but we broadly invite contributions in the field of “climate change and society”. We believe that developing a sound understanding requires a diverse approach to evidence synthesis, including quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods evidence (Kastner et al., 2016). We further seek evidence synthesis efforts at all levels, including systematic reviews, evidence and gap maps, systematic reviews, qualitative meta-synthesis, mega-maps as well as maps of maps (Saran & White, 2018). There are scholars in very different communities working on evidence synthesis in the field of climate. We try to represent those different communities in the governance structure of the group. The Editorial Board includes researchers with a background in IPCC or similar climate change assessments as well as scholars involved in the Campbell Collaboration, Cochrane and the Collaboration for Environmental Evidence. The methodological expertise spans from more traditional quantitative systematic reviews to qualitative evidence synthesis methods such as thematic synthesis, framework synthesis, evaluation assessment, and meta-ethnography. Similarly, the Advisory Board comprises senior management of major global environmental assessments such as IPCC, Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services or the United Nations Environment Programmes' Emissions Gap Reports as well as the above mentioned Collaborations. We aim to diversify the representation of marginalised groups in both Boards as CSCG matures. Working on a cross-cutting topic such as climate change provides many interfaces to the work by other Campbell Coordinating Groups. For example, it will be crucial to work closely with the International Development Coordinating Group as both discourses are closely intertwined in the context of international climate policy. Similar, the work by the Education Collaborating Group is relevant as the importance of civic engagement and education for organising transformative climate solutions is increasingly appreciated. Evidence synthesis on climate solutions will also require adjusting available to and developing new methods for the specific context and multidisciplinary structure of the climate discourse requiring regular engagement and cooperation with the Methods Coordinating Group. Finally, as probably true for all Coordinating Groups across Campbell, the work of the Knowledge Translation and Implmentation Coordinating Group that focuses on effective ways of communicating evidence to

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