Socioeconomic scenarios for Switzerland
Forschungsanstalt für Wald, Schnee und Landschaft (WSL)
ongoing
INFRAS, Zoï Environment Network
Decisions about the extent to which climate change will change our world need to be made today. But which assumptions about the future are they based on? Prognos, together with other institutions, will examine how the different socioeconomic development pathways impact greenhouse gases up to 2100 in Switzerland. The project is being led by the Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research (WSL).
The Covid pandemic and the war in Ukraine have shown how dependent the production of climate-damaging greenhouse gases is on societal influence factors – factors that at first glance have nothing to do with energy. The modelling of different social, political, and economic development directions can thus help policy recognise risk and make long-term strategic decisions.
In the context of the Switzerland National Centre for Climate Services’ (NCCS) “Impacts” programme, the WSL is developing five socioeconomic scenarios for how Switzerland might look up to the year 2100. The scenarios will be elaborated according to the European Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP).
On this basis, together with INFRAS, Prognos calculates the greenhouse gas emissions. We consider emissions from:
In addition, we examine the impact of land use and estimate the effect of different economic and environmental political decisions. Zoï Environment Network is supporting us with the communication of the results.
The project takes the following socioeconomic development paths of the (SSP) differentiated by the WSL for Switzerland as its basis:
More information about the project (NCCS website)
Project team: Dr Andreas Kemmler, Dr Almut Kirchner, Dr Alexander Piégsa, Sven Kreidelmeyer, Tim Trachsel, Dr Fabian Muralter
Last update: 30.11.2023
Senior Project Manager
Partner, Director
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Prognos is one of the oldest economic research centres in Europe. Founded at the University of Basel, Prognos experts have been conducting research for a wide range of clients from the public and private sectors since 1959 – politically independent, scientifically sound.