Sub-Saharan Africa is at a pivotal crossroads in its development. Its choice of energy for the future will be decisive in achieving its sustainable development ambitions, including clean and affordable electricity access for all. This report provides an overview of the state of the energy transition in sub-Saharan Africa.
Costs and benefits of adaptation
In order to assess feasible adaptation options the analysis of costs and benefits is crucial. Adaptation costs mainly refer to making society more resilient to climate change and the benefits consist of avoided damage by adjusting to climate change.
Publications
Current levels of adaptation finance are woefully insufficient. This brief compares what has been delivered to date, with future commitments, and what the IPCC estimates costs will be in 2030 and 2050.
This report looks into the application of CLIMADA (CLIMate ADAptation), a natural catastrophe model that calculates climate risk and potential of adaptation in the Caribbean. The study marks a starting point to determine economic losses and damages as well as adaptation measures for the region which is commonly exposed to natural disasters.
The COP26 climate summit in Glasgow saw important progress made on the Global Goal on Adaptation (GGA). However, there is much work still to be done to bring the GGA concept to life. Striking a balance between the GGA serving its ‘global’ purpose, whilst providing sufficient flexibility for countries to describe their own adaptation objectives and progress will ultimately determine the effectiveness of the GGA.
Increasing evidence suggests that climate change impacts are already observed around the world. Global environmental assessments face challenges to appraise the growing literature. Here we use the language model BERT to identify and classify studies on observed climate impacts, producing a comprehensive machine-learning-assisted evidence map.
Constraints and limits to adaptation are critical to understanding the extent to which human and natural systems can successfully adapt to climate change.
The impacts of climate change on the food system are a key concern for societies and policy makers globally. Assessments of the biophysical impacts of crop productivity show modest but uncertain impacts. But crop growth is not the only factor that matters for the food production. Climate impacts on the labour force through increased heat stress also need to be considered. Here, we provide projections for the integrated climate-induced impacts on crop yields and worker productivity on the agro-economy in a global multi-sector economic model.
Projects
The Assessing Climate Change Risk in Europe (ACCREU) project aims to advance science on economic impacts from climate change, adaptation actions, and enhancing macroeconomic frameworks for use in policy-making.
The Climate Action Tracker is an independent science-based assessment, which tracks the emission commitments and actions of countries.
The EmBARK-project investigates time scales and possible trajectories of socio-economic transformation processes and analyse their relevance as potential barriers to adaptation to climate change. An improved understanding of the temporal dynamics of such barriers is key in developing a more realistic understanding of future climate impacts and for scientifically robust assessment of future climate related loss and damage.
The Socioeconomic Pathways, Adaptation, and Resilience to a Changing Climate in Europe (SPARCCLE) project aims better inform decision-making on the risks posed by climate change. The project is updating climate risk projections and using these as the bases for creating new mitigation and adaptation strategies, taking into account local vulnerabilities and capacity constraints.
When climate impacts hit, there are those who don’t, or can’t, leave. The Immobility in a changing climate (ITHACA) project looks at the choices and constraints that lead to people’s immobility in the face of climate change, and what ramifications that has for their lives.
The project aims to investigate how changes in land cover and land management can help to meet the mitigation and adaptation objectives of the Paris Agreement, as well as the Sustainable Development Goals. The project partners findings will be disseminated through a number of tools, events and products and by closely involving stakeholders and policy-makers, with the aim to support sustainable land use decision-making.