Talk:Co-benefits of climate change mitigation

Content from IPCC report
I had added some content from the IPCC AR 6 report last year but Femke has rightly pointed out that it was a copyvio (probably close paraphrasing, I haven't double checked the report yet). I am putting the text in question here because I think it needs to go back in either as a quote or converted into "own words" to not violate copyright. It is sorely missing from the lead now. This content is by the way not rocket science and the IPCC report simply summarised the available literature. So one could probably find it in a compatibly licenced journal article as well and then take it from there. Also I find there are not many different ways one can say the same thing in other words / own words:

"The beneficial or adverse impacts of deploying climate-change mitigation measures are highly context-specific and also depend on the scale. With regards to the transport sector, possible co-benefits of mitigation strategies include: air quality improvements, health benefits, equitable access to transportation services, reduced traffic congestion, and reduced material demand.  For example, measures promoting walkable urban areas can create health co-benefits from cleaner air and benefits from enhanced mobility.  The increased use of green and blue infrastructure can reduce the urban heat island effect and heat stress on people, which will improve the mental and physical health of urban dwellers.  Country-specific co-benefits can include biodiversity conservation, ecosystem services, and livelihoods.

However, there can also be risks, adverse effects or trade-offs from mitigation measures, especially in the area of land-based mitigation measures. " EMsmile (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2023 (UTC) EMsmile (talk) 17:06, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Please be careful with posting copyvio on talk. It does not belong here either. By putting quotes around it you misrepresent IPCC, as there was indeed some minimal paraphrasing. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 17:14, 19 March 2023 (UTC)

Proposing merger or name change
I wonder if we really need this article. To me it's a sub-article of climate change mitigation which could be condensed and then integrated back into climate change mitigation. Very similar content can also be found at climate change adaptation which talks about co-benefits and trade-offs for mitigation and adaptation here. And similar content is also in the article effects of climate change on human health: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_climate_change_on_human_health#Health_co-benefits_from_mitigation_and_adaptation

If we really think this article needs to stay then I propose a name change to Synergies and trade-offs for climate change mitigation. We can't really look at only the co-benefits (synergies) but should also mention potential trade-offs in the same article.

A big chunk of this article was added by an IP address editor in March 21, see here.

Pinging @InformationToKnowledge as they have also shown a general interest in mergers. EMsmile (talk) 17:13, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * there was a deletion discussion for this article a year ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Co-benefits_of_climate_change_mitigation At the time, the proposal was to merge it into an IPCC report article which was a bit silly. My proposal is to merge it into climate change mitigation or otherwise to broaden its scope to become Synergies and trade-offs for climate change mitigation. I am concerned that pretty much the same content appears in four places now:
 * * climate change mitigation
 * * climate change adaptation
 * * effects of climate change on human health
 * * Co-benefits of climate change mitigation

We don't have enough resources to updated and maintain this content in too many different articles. EMsmile (talk) 17:17, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Rename to name suggested above. I feel this is an extremely important subject which deserves its own article but adding trade-offs is a good idea Chidgk1 (talk) 18:20, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * “Health co-benefits from mitigation and adaptation” linked above only mentions mitigation so should be excerpted here or vice-versa I think Chidgk1 (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh it already is excerpted here Chidgk1 (talk) 18:27, 19 March 2023 (UTC)


 * against rescoping, but maybe okay with merge. The new scope would overlap too much with the mitigation article. I'm against 'middle management' articles of overly broad scope. Either be specific like this, or merge it in the top article. Is the mitigation article sufficiently short to merge? Synergies is an overly difficult word and too much a buzzword: shouldn't be in a title. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:26, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * You mean the “risks” section there would overlap with “trade-offs” here? That section is very small. Accept your point about “synergies” - new name could be Co-benefits and trade-offs for climate change mitigation. Chidgk1 (talk) 18:36, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Most of these tradeoffs are noted in the carbon sequestration section. It seems mitigation is still over 10,000 words, so longer than ideal. We should not complicate this with a merge. —Femke 🐦 (talk) 18:41, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * I've done a bit of work on this article. I think there is a fair bit of fluff here and in some cases poorly sourced content that could still be culled. If we find that more culling makes sense then eventually it would get so small that a merger into climate change mitigation would work. Or we decide to leave it and don't merge.
 * But I don't understand your comment about risks / trade offs, Femke? If we leave this out of the title (and I understand your concern) then we should at least link to the right place where this is discussed in another article. I can't find a risk section at carbon sequestration? We do have a very small section about risk at climate change mitigation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_mitigation#Risks (I can see that it seems counter-intuitive to have a big section on risks; after all we all know that CC mitigation is simply necessary; still, if there are risks we should point out what they are and how they get managed). EMsmile (talk) 22:19, 19 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Rename and rescope, to a different name. I agree that the current article is in a poor state; yet, there is clearly a potential for it to be much larger, as the current article describes all its points only in the most general terms. At the same time, I share Femke's concern about the currently proposed titles, since they either include marketspeak like "synergies" or overemphasize risks/trade-offs.
 * My proposal is to have a title like Secondary effects of climate change policies, and rescope the article to cover the "non-target" effects of both climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation - the current adaptation article is already too full of general phrasings with little clarity in my view, and its tiny sections on issues like maladaptation are no exception. In my experience, it's not uncommon to find people saying things like "climate change cannot be stopped/is too expensive to stop, it's better that we adapt to it". Whether it's said in good faith or not, I think that the most effective way of presenting the scientific consensus that the costs of adaptation are many times greater than those of mitigation is by presenting the evidence on positive and negative outcomes of both types of climate change responses side-by-side. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 05:54, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I always like your interesting and thoughtful ideas, User:InformationToKnowledge. Your proposed new title is I think perhaps too abstract. It would work well as a book title but for a Wikipedia article I am not so sure. I prefer short and narrow topics. Recently I worked on urban heat island and it was so easy because it was narrow and well defined... An article named Secondary effects of climate change policies would linger at low page views at a sub-sub article level, I fear.
 * For one, what do we man with "climate change policies"? We don't even have a Wikipedia article for that... This term redirects to politics of climate change which is a little different though. Perhaps Secondary effects of climate action would be better?
 * For me, something like adaptation is not a "climate change policy" but is something that simply needs doing and is ongoing - irrespective of the theoretical debate if we should adapt. E.g. our cities are getting hotter so we need to do something about that - now.
 * We do have an article on climate action. Wondering if we could add content about "secondary effects" to the climate action article? Or branch off from there to the new sub-article. But also the term "secondary effects" is vague. Do we mean "pros and cons"? As an aside: Overall, amongst all the secondary effects, the "pros" would far outweigh the "cons", right?
 * Regarding the climate change adaptation article could you please add your suggestions for improvement to the talk page there? User:Richarit has recently made lots of improvements to that article (and I've assisted a bit), so it would be useful to get your comments on that article. EMsmile (talk) 10:13, 20 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, good point that adaptation would have to be done anyway.
 * I have been thinking more about this, and I now suggest Secondary impacts of climate responses as the new title. Using the word responses would really emphasize that it's about the actions relevant actors are simply forced to take by the circumstances as much as it is about what they decide to do when there are still options for them.
 * Thanks for that last suggestion. I would try to start a discussion on the CCA talk page once I successfully follow through on at least one of three or four major merges I proposed earlier: those are kinda a lot to deal with already! InformationToKnowledge (talk) 16:36, 25 March 2023 (UTC)

I just started reading the AR6 synthesis report summary for policymakers and in section B.6.4 they use the word "synergies" - so I have changed my mind and now like that word. Chidgk1 (talk) 19:45, 20 March 2023 (UTC)


 * Oh and they give large scale production of biomass crops as an example of a trade-off Chidgk1 (talk) 19:53, 20 March 2023 (UTC)

Way forward?
Coming back to this discussion. I think I favour User:Femke's suggestion of merging this into climate change mitigation. The article actually consists mostly of excerpts and only has 796 words readable prose size, so rather short. The suggestion by InformationToKnowledge to set up a new article called Secondary impacts of climate responses would be exciting but realistically would anyone really have time for it? And also would any readers actually search for that? I think the secondary impacts of climate responses should be integrated into climate change mitigation and climate change adaptation and don't need a separate article. The main two climate responses are mitigation and adaptation, right? Or do you have others in mind? EMsmile (talk) 11:16, 25 April 2023 (UTC)


 * Well, I wrote yet another draft to demonstrate what I had in mind. I think that draft can become the basis for a very useful article in the future. Right now, though, it is sadly more like proof of the very poor state of many of the articles associated it with.
 * For instance, did you know that we have both Environmental impacts of lithium-ion batteries and Environmental footprint of electric cars, and that they both get a substantial amount of views, in spite of their pitiful state?
 * Even better: did you know that we have an Issues relating to biofuels page that is now larger than the biofuels page itself? Let alone a tiny Environmental impact of biodiesel page? There is also a Food vs. fuel page, which is a reasonable idea, but I don't think it's good content distribution when it is nearly as large as those three pages combined.
 * Last but not least: I really wonder how the decision to split environment into natural environment and biophysical environment (a tiny, uninformative page with 5 references) was ever approved in the first place. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 17:36, 27 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I looked at your draft. It has a lot of excerpts in it (although perhaps later you plan to replace them). I still think that at least the part about adaptation is better off in the climate change adaptation article. The part about mitigation will probably become too big to be merged into climate change mitigation and might warrant its own sub-article. But then we could just modify this existing article ("Co-benefits of climate change mitigation") to become Secondary impacts of climate change mitigation? In general, I hesitate to create new articles as we are struggling to keep up with maintaining all our existing articles.
 * As to the poor state of affairs of many climate and environment related articles, I couldn't agree with you more! :-) It's overwhelming, isn't it? I've just written about it on my talk page as well and pinged you. I am thinking of applying for more project money to get some funded time together for people to work on this in a constructive and collaborative manner. Would you be interested? EMsmile (talk) 10:22, 28 April 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm honoured to receive this offer! However, I believe it might benefit the project more if that position were to bring in someone who wouldn't otherwise be engaged with it, so I'll have to pass for now.
 * And yes, the secondary impacts draft is intended as a replacement for this article, as I believe it addresses the main issue (limited scope) by creating a single one-stop directory of all notable impacts, positive and negative, in a way similar to tipping points in the climate system and effects of climate change articles (good luck with the GA nomination on this one, by the way! I may contribute to that article once I get the livestock draft launched). Yes, it is heavy on excerpts, but then again, it is a draft, and the idea was to demonstrate what I want the replacement for this article to look like before it gets removed. Right now, though, it wouldn't make sense to launch the secondary impacts article, as the articles it would link to still need so much work to be worthy of presentation first. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 18:57, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

Way forward (2)?
Where do we stand with this now, 10 months later. Pinging the previously involved people User:InformationToKnowledge, User:Femke, User:Chidgk1. Maybe new or different ideas have come to light in the meantime. I still favour merging into climate change mitigation, for simplicity reasons. EMsmile (talk) 13:00, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * The draft article Secondary impacts of climate responses doesn't really convince me. I can't image that readers would search for that kind of topic. Maybe some of that content could be added to climate action. The parts that relate to adaptation are already in climate change adaptation. EMsmile (talk) 13:02, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * Support merge - OK I suppose you are right @EMsmile - I cannot think of a better idea Chidgk1 (talk) 17:37, 3 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I still think that we need an article which would have the goal of combining credible warnings of risks associated with the various climate action/energy transition approaches into one location - and of contrasting it with both the risks of climate change and with these co-benefits. For instance, we might be able to merge articles like issues relating to biofuels, Food vs. fuel, Environmental impacts of lithium-ion batteries and Environmental footprint of electric cars into one thing. However, that is a fairly complicated task, and I suppose that merging this article into mitigation would not really interfere with it either. Thus, I would support the merge. InformationToKnowledge (talk) 06:39, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
 * I've carried out the merger now. Further discussion on the talk page of climate change mitigation. EMsmile (talk) 08:25, 12 April 2024 (UTC)