Impacts and Vulnerability

Regional impacts and vulnerabilities are strongly dependent on the specific setting of physical exposure, the socio-economic development and livelihoods. Our work in this area focuses on assessing the full pathway from regional biophysical impacts to risks and damages, in order to identify adaptation priorities and to better understand the implications of different global goals of limiting climate change.

Publications

This report, produced in collaboration with Solutions for Our Climate, calculates a 1.5°C-aligned phase out date for fossil gas in the South Korean power sector. We find that South Korea should aim to phase out fossil gas from the power sector before 2035.  
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.  
Limiting global warming to 1.5°C requires transforming almost all systems, from how we power our economy and build our cities to how we feed a growing population and manage our land. This report provides an overview of how we are collectively doing in addressing the climate crisis.  
Vulnerable communities often live in climate-exposed locations, and have access to fewer resources to prepare for and respond to disasters. This is the case for Haitian migrants in The Bahamas. Haitian communities were the locus of the majority of deaths and missing people attributed to the 2019 Hurricane Dorian and faced a series of distributional, procedural and recognition injustices. We investigate the historical factors and contemporary conditions of Haitian communities in The Bahamas that resulted in significant inequities, disproportional impacts and infractions of human rights.  
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.  

Projects

The Climate Action Tracker is an independent science-based assessment, which tracks the emission commitments and actions of countries.  
This project looks at future risks from water scarcity and food insecurity in vulnerable countries in the Horn of Africa Drylands and supports community-centered climate adaptation and resilience.  
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.  
IMPACT is a cross-cutting, multi-faceted project that aims to strengthen the connections between the scientific assessments of climate impacts, vulnerability and adaptation to help enable access to finance and help Small Island Developing States (SIDS) and Least Developed Countries (LDCs) implement concrete projects.  
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.