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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
MAPSMulti-criteria decision analysis in climate policy
Centre for Policy Research Workshop
21 May 2015
Dr Brett Cohen
Energy Research Centre
University of Cape Town
South Africa
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Challenges of a multiple objectives approach
• When you have multiple objectives, some are quantitative and some are qualitative
• Traditional energy and climate models concentrate on quantitative
criteria:
• GDP
• Employment
• CO2
• Harder to include qualitative measures
• Don’t provide guidance as to what is “preferred” or prioritised
• Job creation vs cost
• Poverty alleviation vs GHG mitigation potential
• Often decisions are not transparent, participative or repeatable
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
How can MCDA help overcome these challenges?
• MCDA provides a variety of tools that:
• Support structured approaches to framing the decision process that
makes it transparent, defensible and repeatable
• Allow for engagement of stakeholders throughout the decision
process, thereby increasing buy-in and access to data
• Allow for quantitative and qualitative criteria to be considered
simultaneously on an equal footing
• Quantitative scales, proxy scales and constructed scales
• Allow for exploring trade-offs and the implications thereof in a
structured fashion (through weighting and compensation)
• Conducting sensitivity and uncertainty analysis
• Ultimately it’s about a “Good process” vs necessarily a “good answer”
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Uses of MCDA
• Used for complex problems:
• Multiple stakeholders with different views
• Multiple criteria/objectives
• Transparent and defensible decision processes
• Historically used for discrete decision problems rather than policy setting
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Challenges
• (Very) time consuming and resource intensive
• Requires ongoing engagement from stakeholders
• Requires a skilled decision analyst
• Stakeholders may argue that the process is not accessible/understandable
• People looking for a single point result without appreciating:
• Process as important as the outcome
• Results are sensitive to the input parameters (like any modeling)
• Uncertainty/sensitivity analysis an important part of exercise and
interpretation of the results
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Has MCDA been used in climate policy?
• South Africa:
• Mitigation potential analysis
• Co-benefits of mitigation technologies analysed:
• Jobs
• Contribution to GDP
• Water
• etc
• Qualitative high level analysis which allowed stakeholders to come
to grips with the multiple impacts of climate mitigation technologies
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Has MCDA been used in climate policy?• Colombia:
• Attempt to rank mitigation options on a qualitative (1-5 scale) for
>70 co-benefits
• However scoring scales were not well defined
• Stakeholder fatigue after ranking x alternatives – put down any
answers
• Chile:
• Attempted to used MCDA in their climate planning process
• After trying to quantify multiple objectives, ended up with three
parameters – feasibility of implementation, abatement cost and
abatement potential
• Provided a sound platform for engagement on the multiple
development issues
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
In summary…
• MCDA approaches require time and resource investment and stakeholder engagement
• Having said this, if decision making around policy is to truly engage with multiple development objectives, MCDA provides an established set of approaches
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Mitigation Action Plans and Scenarios
Who Supports MAPS
Thank You
www.mapsprogramme.org