The development of the global economy is central to how humanity deals with climate change and environmental changes. Increased prosperity, particularly for lower-income groups, means more access to technology, better health and mobility, and thus more resilience to natural disasters. A mathematical model based on empirical data now suggests that the forecasts used today for economic development in the coming decades may be overly optimistic. As a working group led by Matthew G. Burgess of the University of Colorado, their model projects slow economic growth and relatively high inequality in the 21st century, similar to the SSP 4 scenario, which serves as the basis for climate models that depend on economic development.
background From the study published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment. It is the question of what economic assumptions should be based on future climate models. The scenarios presented in the IPCC reports are based on a total of five so-called Shared Socio-economic Paths (SSP) representing different economic developments. Burgess’s team points out that the differences between these programs are very significant. However, the research community uses them without really knowing how reasonable they are.
The model used by the working group is “agnostic,” meaning that it does not represent the underlying mechanisms that influence economic trends. Instead, it consists of a set of differential equations based on the empirical relationship between growth and per capita income – so the model correctly captures historical trends and projects them into the long-term future. These models are playing an increasing role in economic calculations since the necessary computational capacity and data of sufficient quality become available. Based on economic data from the 20th century, this model calculated growth rates for 2010 more accurately than short-term IMF models at the time, the team wrote in the publication.
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