This report provides a critical assessment of adaptation costs and benefits in key climate sensitive sectors, as well as at national and global levels.
This report provides a critical assessment of adaptation costs and benefits in key climate sensitive sectors, as well as at national and global levels.
Against the background of a projected doubling of world greenhouse gas emissions by mid-century, this book explores feasible ways to abate them at least cost.
This report provides a critical assessment of adaptation costs and benefits in key climate sensitive sectors, as well as at national and global levels.
Climate change poses many challenges that affect society and the natural world. With these challenges, however, come opportunities to respond. By taking steps to adapt to and mitigate climate change, the risks to society and the impacts of continued climate change can be lessened. The National Climate Assessment, coordinated by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, is a mandated report intended to inform response decisions. Required to be developed every four years, these reports provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date evaluation of climate change impacts available for the United States, making them a unique and important climate change document. The draft Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4) report reviewed here addresses a wide range of topics of high importance to the United States and society more broadly, extending from human health and community well-being, to the built environment, to businesses and economies, to ecosystems and natural resources. This report evaluates the draft NCA4 to determine if it meets the requirements of the federal mandate, whether it provides accurate information grounded in the scientific literature, and whether it effectively communicates climate science, impacts, and responses for general audiences including the public, decision makers, and other stakeholders.
Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of this century. Mitigation requires a large-scale transition to a low-carbon economy. This paper provides an overview of the rapidly growing literature on the role of macroeconomic and financial policy tools in enabling this transition. The literature provides a menu of policy tools for mitigation. A key conclusion is that fiscal tools are first in line and central, but can and may need to be complemented by financial and monetary policy instruments. Some tools and policies raise unanswered questions about policy tool assignment and mandates, which we describe. The literature is scarce, however, on the most effective policy mix and the role of mitigation tools and goals in the overall policy framework.
This unique and erudite second edition can be used at three different levels – advanced undergraduate, post-graduate and doctoral. It comprehensively covers the critical issues on the economics of climate change and climate policy features and clearly identifies the specific sections each level of reader should explore. Topics include the costs and benefits of adaptation and mitigation, discounting, uncertainty, policy instruments, and international agreements. Lectures can be combined with exercises, guided reading, or the building and application of an integrated assessment model. The book is accompanied by a website with background material, data, opinion pieces and videos. Although primarily intended for use in the classroom, anyone with an interest in climate policy can use this text as a reference.
Ending poverty and stabilizing climate change will be two unprecedented global achievements and two major steps toward sustainable development. But the two objectives cannot be considered in isolation: they need to be jointly tackled through an integrated strategy. This report brings together those two objectives and explores how they can more easily be achieved if considered together. It examines the potential impact of climate change and climate policies on poverty reduction. It also provides guidance on how to create a “win-win†? situation so that climate change policies contribute to poverty reduction and poverty-reduction policies contribute to climate change mitigation and resilience building. The key finding of the report is that climate change represents a significant obstacle to the sustained eradication of poverty, but future impacts on poverty are determined by policy choices: rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development can prevent most short-term impacts whereas immediate pro-poor, emissions-reduction policies can drastically limit long-term ones.
Climate change represents an increasing threat to the continued development of the people, preservation of ecosystems, and economic growth of Asia and the Pacific. Mainstreaming climate risk management in all aspects of development is thus key to an effective transition to climate-resilient development pathways. ADB's climate risk management framework aims to reduce risks resulting from climate change to investment projects in Asia and the Pacific. A key step in this framework is the technical and economic valuation of climate-proofing measures. This report describes the conduct of the cost-benefit analysis of climate proofing investment projects. An important message is that the presence of uncertainty about climate change does not invalidate the conduct of the economic analysis of investment projects, nor does it require a new type of economic analysis. However, the presence of uncertainty does require a different type of decision-making process in which technical and economic expertise combine to present decision makers with the best possible information on the economic efficiency of alternative designs of investment projects.