Agnese Beltramo

How can we make global climate governance effective?

When the Paris Agreement was signed eight years ago, we were all hoping that effective climate actions and policies would quickly start following, initiating a concrete transition towards a more sustainable society. Unfortunately, reality showed us a different evolution. Decision-making processes around climate change are complex and therefore take long time to translate into practice. In addition, they often lack in transparency, which results into a low level of trust across the various actors involved. The wide range of expertise and the large number of stakeholders needed to correctly assess climate-related problems and find effective solutions are key factors in causing these issues and lowering the efficacy and commitment of climate-related decision-making.

With my research I decided to try to explore these complexities, and better understand how to support a more transparent, equal, and enabling process that can lead to concrete actions, with a particular attention to supporting the Global South in enhancing their participation.

Particularly, I am looking into how principles and practices related to open science, and more specifically embedding transparency in the models and data used for resource systems planning, might play a role in this context.

As a PhD candidate at the division of Energy Systems of the Energy Technology Department at KTH, and as a researcher under the Climate Compatible Growth (CCG) programme, I am situated in an ideal position to conduct my research. Thanks to the activities planned under CCG, such as developing capacity to support long-term planning and decision-making process for low-carbon development, I am working on disseminating open science practices and applying them within research and capacity building activities across the Global South. At the same time, I am also able to interact with policymakers from several countries, committed and involved in the transition towards low-carbon and sustainable resource systems, to investigate their interest, opinion, and knowledge on open science.

Background

I hold a Master of Science in Sustainable Technology from KTH (Sweden), and a Bachelor of Science in Energy Engineering from Politecnico di Torino (Italy).

Before starting my PhD, I interned at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) and at the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA).