This report finds that overcoming global inequality is critical for land-based mitigation in line with the Paris Agreement. We show that if sustainable development in the land sector remained highly unequal and limited to high-income countries only, global agriculture, forestry and other land use emissions would remain substantial throughout the 21st century.
Our areas of expertise include:
Contact
Dr. Michiel Schaeffer
We work to understand the effects of climate change on the livelihoods and development perspectives of vulnerable groups. Impact and vulnerability assessments provide an important basis for identifying adaptation requirements and analysing loss and damage. By assessing the implications of impacts at different levels of warming, we gain a better understanding of the implications of different emission pathways. Small island developing states and least developed countries face enormous challenges in particular. Their physical exposure and limited adaptation options and adaptive capacity make them especially vulnerable.
Publications
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.
This paper provides five scenarios of sustainable irrigation deployment in the 21st century integrated into the framework of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways, which account for biophysical irrigation limits and socioeconomic constraints. We find that the potential for sustainable irrigation expansion implied by biophysical limits alone is considerably reduced when socioeconomic factors are considered.
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.
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.
Although effects on labour is one of the most tangible and attributable climate impact, our quantification of these effects is insufficient and based on weak methodologies. Partly, this gap is due to the inability to resolve different impact channels, such as changes in time allocation (labour supply) and slowdown of work (labour productivity). Explicitly resolving those in a multi-model inter-comparison framework can help to improve estimates of the effects of climate change on labour effectiveness.
Projects
Supported by UNEP, the Economic Growth and Climate Change in Africa research assesses how climate variability affects economic output.
Project Period: 2014 - 2015
SLICE is investigating Short- and Long-Term Impacts of Climate Extremes and aims to develop a systematic understanding of the channels through which climate extremes impact socio-economic development all the way from the household to the macroeconomic level. This will help developing effective strategies for long-term economic development under climate change.
This World Bank funded project supports five African countries in developing and implementing plans and investments for managing climate and disaster risks.
Produced for the AMCEN, the research aims at improving and understanding science related to loss and damage in Africa, as well as the existing mechanisms to address loss and damage and their limitations. The research also explores the options for institutional arrangements on loss and damage under the UNFCC and investigates the next steps related to the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage.
Project Period: 2013 - 2014
This project is an extension of the PAS-PNA project in Benin, Senegal and Burkina Faso. In each country, Climate Analytics, together with the national Green Climate Fund (GCF) Accredited Entity, is conducting the pre-feasibility or feasibility studies for selected adaptation projects, providing governments with an evidence-base to support the development of GCF concept notes and funding proposals.