Adapting to climate change (original) (raw)
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This paper deals with the often ignored issue of adaptation to human-induced climate change. Adaptation is not only inevitable but essential to fashioning the least-social-cost strategy to addressing climate change. The urgency for limiting climate change is inversely proportional to society's adaptability. Some mitigation strategies are incompatible with adaptation goals (e.g., reducing CO 2 rather than equivalent amounts of other greenhouse gases may compromise several adaptation goals) and climate change impacts --and, therefore, benefits --analysis must necessarily incorporate adaptation.
Climate change : the cost of inaction and the cost of adaptation
2007
Significant changes in climate are already visible globally, and are expected to become more pronounced in the future. These will lead to wide ranging impacts on the natural and man-made environment across different sectors and regions, which in turn will lead to economic costs. These economic costs of climate change are often known as the 'costs of inaction' and are increasingly helping to inform the policy debate. It is also evident that even if emissions of greenhouse gases stop today, changes in climate will continue for many decades. Therefore, in addition to mitigation, it is essential to develop adequate adaptive responses (adaptation) as a means of moderating damages or realising opportunities associated with climate change. To allow a fully informed debate on adaptation, there is a need to consider the economic aspects of adaptation.
Mitigation and adaptation to climate change
Climate change produces significant social and economic impacts in most parts of the world, thus global action is needed to address climate change. In this paper I will study the different possibilities of mitigation from different points of view, and analyse the possibilities of adaptation to climate change. First, substantial reduction of GHG emission is needed, on the other hand adaptation action must deal with the inevitable impacts. According to my assessment, it is essential that coordinated actions be taken at an EU level. In my argumentation I will use a macroeconomic model for the cost-benefit analysis of GHG gas emissions reduction. I will analyse the GHG emission structure on a European and world level. Even in case of a successful mitigation strategy there rest the long-term effects of climate change which will need a coherent adaptation strategy to address. Although certain adaptation measures already have been made, these initiatives are still very modest, and insufficient to deal with the economic effects of climate change properly.
A perspective paper on adaptation as a response to climate change
2009
COPENHAGEN CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE copenhAgen consensus on climAte The Copenhagen Consensus Center has commissioned 21 papers to examine the costs and benefits of different solutions to global warming. The project's goal is to answer the question: "If the global community wants to spend up to, say $250 billion per year over the next 10 years to diminish the adverse effects of climate changes, and to do most good for the world, which solutions would yield the greatest net benefits?" The series of papers is divided into Assessment Papers and Perspective Papers. Each Assessment Paper outlines the costs and benefits of one way to respond to global warming. Each Perspective Paper reviews the assumptions and analyses made within an Assessment Paper. It is hoped that, as a body of work, this research will provide a foundation for an informed debate about the best way to respond to this threat. Adaptation to climate change impacts will be necessary, and may require substantial economic resources. Economic analysis of adaptation, including costs and benefits, is subject to similar complications and limitations that beset quantitative economic analysis of climate change mitigation. To make such analysis relevant for policy decisions, the analysis must incorporate three factors that define the economics of climate change. The first is uncertainty, in particular the risk of abrupt climate change, which is a major reason for urgency in addressing climate change. The second is improved calibration of economic climate change impacts, and the inclusion of non-market impacts. The third is equity and differential climate impacts at the fine scale, which will define adaptation actions in practice. Hence, there is a long road ahead in improving the tools for economic modelling of adaptation, and the mitigation-adaptation nexus. Meanwhile, the crucial question for policymakers is not the benefit-cost ratio for adaptation in aggregate, but whether and where specific adaptation actions are beneficial, what new policies are needed to support adaptive action, and what existing policies need to be changed or scrapped.
Environ. Sci. Policy 8, 537-540, 2005
We introduce the set of papers on the theme on mitigation and adaptation strategies for climate change with some general observations on climate change and climatepolicies. Our focus is the question of what mix of policies – including policies that have been neglected hitherto – needs to be pursued in light of the scientific evidence about climate change and the successes or failures of dominant climate policies to date.We follow a standard division in our discussion and dichotomize relevant research programs and policy approaches as either reducing climatically significant human activities (mitigation) or as enhancing the capacity of societies to cope with changing climatic conditions (adaptation).
To Mitigate or To Adapt: How to combat with Climate Change
The strategic interaction between mitigation and adaptation is analyzed with a non-cooperative game, where regions are players, and where mitigation and adap- tation are prefect substitutes in protecting against climate impacts. We allow for step by step decision making, where mitigation is chosen rst and adaptation sec- ond, and where the benets of mitigation accrue only in the future. If marginal costs of adaptation negatively depend on global mitigation and if regions are rel- atively rich in terms of income, they simultaneously invest in both mitigation and adaptation. However, if regions are relatively poor, they engage in mitigation only. JEL-classication: C72, H41, Q25
To mitigate or to adapt: how to combat with global climate change
European Journal of Political Economy ( …, 2010
Adaptation and mitigation are the most important policy options in respond-ing to the threat of global climate change. But even if adaptation and mitigation were equally effective in protecting against potential damages from global warming, there are significant differences between ...
Social change to avert further climate change
2012
The inability of the international community so far to materially affect the trend in anthropogenic emissions demonstrates the urgent need to formulate an effective response to the threat of climate change. We offer a detailed picturedisaggregated by country-of the social changes necessary to reduce the rate and risk of climate change. We recognize two broad types of social changechanges that either reduce energy intensity or reduce carbon intensity. Through the Kaya identity, we demonstrate that the current business as usual scenario expects a carbon concentration of approximately 660 ppm by 2100, which corresponds to a potentially catastrophic 4.9 • C temperature increase. Through a low-carbon-emissions scenario built on principles used by the Center for Energy and Environmental Policy over the past 20 years, we show the social changes required to realize a hopefully sustainable 450 ppm carbon dioxide concentration with an equitable 3.3 ton/capita annual carbon emissions budget. We conclude that all members of the international community-even Non-Annex 1 membersface major and immediate challenges in any common effort to address climate change. Our analysis supports exploratory efforts for the formulation of menus of social change. As a preliminary basis for identifying such menus of social change, we suggest priority be given to bottom-up discourses that position the principles of sustainability, equity, development autonomy, and justice at the core of decision-making.
Mitigation, Adaptation, Suffering': In Search of the Right Mix in the Face of Climate Change
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2000
The usually assumed two categories of costs involved in climate change policy analysis, namely abatement and damage costs, hide the presence of a third category, namely adaptation costs. This dodges the determination of an appropriate level for them. Including adaptation costs explicitly in the total environmental cost function allows one to characterize the optimal (cost minimizing) balance between the three categories, in statics as well as in dynamics. Implications are derived for cost benefit analysis of adaptation expenditures.