Methodology

The Sectoral Conversations will bring together qualitative and quantitative sectoral expertise from the NDC ASPECTS consortium and a diverse set of stakeholders, both in geographic terms and different constituencies – academia, policymaking, industry, and civil society. They are conceived as series of sector-specific, transdisciplinary, mutual learning formats within a sectoral system that co-produce knowledge and build relationships over the project lifetime. Four parallel Sectoral Conversations will be held, one for each of the four sectoral systems in focus (WP1).

For more information about the Sectoral Conversations, watch our video explainer below.

We adopt a framework for organising structured interactions among different methods for analysing the various aspects of adequate climate transitions. It formulates narratives in a qualitative or semi-quantitative language, understandable to all stakeholders, and an internally consistent set of quantitative parameters, describing the evolution of emissions drivers and key socio-economic and development indicators. These two complementary representations of the transition allow both a broad involvement of stakeholders with their respective perspectives and explicit, accurate benchmarking against requirements for climate ambition.

Qualitative policy and governance analysis will be a key methodological ingredient of NDC ASPECTS. We will draw on concepts and insights generated in relevant political science research, social science more broadly, law, and applied economics. We will explore transformation opportunities, challenges, and appropriate packages of policy instruments in the targeted sectors (WP4), identify appropriate policy sets for varying national contexts (WP5), and elaborate options for supporting international cooperation and governance (WP6).

NDC ASPECTS will employ a suite of models that collectively provide a high degree of granular information at the global level, at the national level of the selected countries, across all four sectors, and, as auxiliary analyses, of the energy conversion sector and interactions between sectors. The models will be used to translate sectoral and economy-wide narratives into quantitative indicators, benchmarks, and fully-fledged pathways.

The project work will follow the European Union’s requirements of actively improving gender equality. Gender will be considered in many aspects of the project, for instance, understanding of underlying socio-economic conditions/barriers of existing NDCs, deriving national pathways that take improving gender equality into account, and validating the integrated gender-responsive effectiveness and feasibility of policy and governance options.