Item talk:Q709

Rationale

The rationale for using a sectoral approach to climate analysis is informed by a broad body of work that emphasizes the need to break down the complex, interlinked drivers of climate change into more manageable components. [1] By examining sectors such as energy, agriculture, transportation, and industry individually, analysts can identify unique emission profiles, vulnerabilities, and adaptation challenges specific to each domain. This targeted focus enables policymakers to design tailored mitigation strategies and allocate resources more effectively, ultimately integrating these specific interventions into a coherent, comprehensive climate strategy that addresses both immediate risks and long-term sustainability.

Drawing on a literature review and user research, the United Nations (UN) Industrial Standard Classification System, Revision 5 (ISIC) [2] was selected as the foundation for our sectors concept due to its:

• Comprehensive Coverage It details a wide range of economic activities across all sectors.
• Global Scope Widely used and accepted internationally, ensuring broad applicability and neutrality, as compared to continental equivalents.
• Foundation for Other Systems Underpins numerous other knowledge organisation systems, which enhances its compatibility.
• Open Access Freely available, promoting transparency and collaboration.

ISIC classifies sectors on the basis of economic activities. This contrasts with other conceptions of a sector in climate discourse, such as the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Emission Factor Database [3]. ISIC was cross-referenced against a sample of such sources [4] [5] to confirm that there's no fundamental incompatibility, and the approach was validated with external academic expertise.

All but the most granular level of ISIC’s four-tier hierarchy of concepts were used as the basis for this concept, then adjusted using internal expertise to better suit climate-specific use cases and our approach to machine learning. This involved deleting and renaming concepts, and adjusting relationships between them. A case-by-case approach was used for each sector, which involved cross-referencing between multiple items, judgements about relevance and shifts in the structure inherited from ISIC.

Bundled ISIC categories like `Agriculture, Forestry, and Fishing` were split into individual sectors (`Agriculture`, `Forestry`, and `Fishing`) to enable more precise analysis. Sectors not fully detailed in ISIC but relevant to climate policy were expanded and created, such as `International Affairs`. While preserving ISIC as a foundation, this approach departs from ISIC’s strict, mutually exclusive structure to allow for overlapping and inter-related sectoral concepts where appropriate.

ISIC's Explanatory Notes [6] were used as the basis of detailed explanations of what activities are in scope for each sector. Because we diverge from ISIC’s mutual exclusivity, these descriptions and definitions are subject to change. Each item’s edit history is visible in Concept Store, providing transparency on its evolution.

Alternative labels and related terms were created to capture the varied language used to refer to each concept in climate documents, focusing on semantic relatedness of terms to improve the detection of different expressions of the same concept.

References & acknowledgements

We are grateful for the expertise and contributions of Adam William Chalmers. We also acknowledge the building blocks of our taxonomy, namely the extensive research and work of the UN Statistics Division developing ISIC.

[1] IPCC. (2023). "Summary for Policymakers." in "Climate Change 2023: Synthesis Report. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change." Retrieved from https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/syr/

[2] UN. (2024). ISIC Rev. 5 (forthcoming UN publication). Retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/unsd/classifications/Econ/isic

[3] IPCC. (2024). Emission Factor Database. Retrieved from https://www.ipcc-nggip.iges.or.jp/EFDB/main.php

[4] Carrots & Sticks. (2024). Annual Report 2024 – Recognizing the role of transparency to accelerate the SDGs. Retrieved from https://www.carrotsandsticks.net/methodology/

[5] World Resources Institute. (2023). State of Climate Action 2023. Retrieved from https://www.wri.org/research/state-climate-action-2023

[6] UN. (2024). Explanatory Notes of the Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities, Revision 5 (ISIC Rev.5) Retrieved from https://unstats.un.org/unsd/classifications/Econ/isic

Comments

1. As we opted for a strict definition of economic sectors as activities, it was removed from sub-sectors aliases like "household worker" and "household workers", because they do not represent an economic activity.

2. However, it might be necessary to think in another concept capturing those items (e.g. workers, policy-makers).

3. Those aliases referring to actors or stakeholders, might be part of the climate governance vocabulary.

4. An alternative could be the concept of "actors", "legal subjects/ subjects of law", or more precise "climate actors".