Climate Change Policy Implications of Sustainable Development Pathways in Korea at Sub-National Scale

Climate action is goal 13 of UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). Future impacts of climate change depend on climatic changes, the level of climate change policy, both mitigation and adaptation, and socio-economic status and development pathways. To investigate the climate change policy impact of socio-economic development pathways, we develop three pathways. Climate change affects socio-economic development in many ways. We interpret global storylines into South Korean contexts: Shared Socio-economic Pathway 1 (SSP1), SSP2, and SSP3 for population, economy, and land use. SSP elements and proxies were identified and elaborated through stakeholder participatory workshops, demand survey on potential users, past trends, and recent national projections of major proxies. Twenty-nine proxies were quantified using sector-specific models and downscaled where possible. Socio-economic and climate scenarios matrixes enable one to quantify the contribution of climate, population, economic development, and land-use change in future climate change impacts. Economic damage between climate scenarios is different in SSPs, and it highlights that SSPs are one of the key components for future climate change impacts. Achieving SDGs generates additional incentives for local and national governments as it can reduce mitigation and adaptation policy burden.