Help Wanted

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Help Wanted AR4

• Gary Yohe
• March 3, 2004

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Context

• Dont send money.
• Not asking for CLAs or Las
• Send ideas, and work
• Here is the State of the Process as it Begins!

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New Components - WGII

• Chapter 1 Assessment of Observed Changes
• Methods in Detection and Attribution (first order
  causality)
• Larger Scale Aggregation and Attribution (second
  order causality)
• Chapter 2 through 16 Sectors and Regions
• Chapter 17 Assessment of Adaptation Options,
  Capacity, Opportunities, Constraints and Practice
• Methods and Concepts (vulnerability, resilience,
  etc.)
• Current Practices (risk management, variability,
  etc.)
• Assessing Adaptive Capacity (generic and
  specific, links to development)
• Enhancing Adaptation (technologies, adaptive
  learning, etc.)

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More New Components in WGII

• Chapter 18 Inter-relationship between
  Adaptation and Mitigation
• Implementation and determinants of capacity
• Objectives reducing sensitivity, exposure
  dealing with risk
• Scale issues, etc.
• Chapter 19 Key Vulnerabilities (TAR 19)
• Chapter 20 Perspectives on Climate Change and
  Sustainability
• Adaptation with multiple stresses
• Risk and hazard management
• Aggregate impacts versus sub-regional and local
• Uncertainties

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Chapters 18 20

• Their purpose is to address the current state of
  knowledge about how the impacts of climate change
  and climate variability (with and perhaps without
  adaptation) might complement or impede processes
  of sustainable development in the face of
  multiple non-climatic stressors?
• Neither will serve as executive summaries of the
  contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth
  Assessment Report. Rather, they will focus
  attention on new knowledge since the Third
  Assessment Report on the interface between
  climate issues and development strategies.

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A Story Line for Their Contribution

• Fundamental results from the TAR lead to concerns
  about global vulnerabilities to multiple
  stressors.
• A regional focus can reveal the implication of
  vulnerabilities on development, access to
  resources and equity.
• Paying systematic attention on the determinants
  of adaptive capacity can reveal the implication
  of development, access and equity on
  vulnerabilities.
• Current inadequacies in our ability to produce
  global portraits of net impacts are profound.

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Review of pertinent material in the Third
Assessment Report

• The capacity to adapt varies considerably across
  regions, countries, and socioeconomic groups. It
  varies even more significantly from location to
  location within regions and countries.
• Adaptations are most frequently inspired by
  variability and extreme events and not by
  long-term secular changes.
• Least developed countries are likely to be the
  most vulnerable to climate change, climate
  variability, and the effects of other stressors.

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Opportunities and Challenges

• The determinants of adaptive capacity correspond
  well with precursors for sustainable development.
• Sustainable development and adaptation to climate
  change and climate variability are both
  constrained by the weakest underlying determinant
  or precursor.
• The key to integrating climate and development
  issues lies in understanding how systems cope
  with climate variability and other shorter-term
  stressors that impede steps toward sustainable
  development.

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Recall the Determinants of Adaptive Capacity

• Availability of adaptation options
• Availability and distribution of resources
• Stocks of human and social capital
• Ability of decision makers to
• Assume responsibility
• Process information
• Separate signal from noise
• Access to risk spreading mechanisms
• Public perception attribution and responsibility

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Fundamental Conclusions from the TAR - Chapter 18

• Current knowledge of adaptation and adaptive
  capacity is insufficient for reliable prediction
  of adaptations it is also insufficient for
  rigorous evaluation of planned adaptation
  options, measures and policies of governments
  (pg 880 or WGII Report)
• Vulnerability is a function of exposure and
  sensitivity and both can be influenced by
  adaptive capacity
• All of these are path dependent and site specific

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Anticipated Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge
Needs at the End of AR4

• Current knowledge is still insufficient for
  reliable predictions of adaptations across the
  globe (some regions and sectors, particularly in
  developed countries, have been adequately
  analyzed).  
• Current knowledge is still insufficient for
  rigorous evaluation of planned governmental
  adaptations (options, measures or policies)
  across the globe (some regions and sectors,
  particularly in developed countries, have been
  adequately analyzed).
• Current knowledge is still insufficient for
  sustaining credible global portraits of impacts
  cum adaptation along any given climate scenario.

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Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge Needs, continued

• Global integrated assessment efforts cannot yet
  adequately reflect net impacts of even gradual
  and predictable climate change.
• Researchers should not necessarily tie their
  analyses explicitly to global climate scenarios
  climate scenarios can inform their analyses by
  framing a range of not-implausible futures.
• Looking at simultaneous vulnerability to multiple
  stresses can provide insight into how adaptation
  might be most efficiently mainstreamed into
  programs and policies that have been designed to
  alleviate problems of more immediate concern.

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Uncertainties, Gaps and Knowledge Needs, continued

• Climate variability and extreme events become
  priority problems quickly, and so it might be
  possible to mainstream adaptation in these arenas
  most effectively but adequate analysis of an
  adaptation problem does not necessarily translate
  into adequate management.
• Current knowledge can support analyses of the
  joint efficacy of mitigation (stabilization
  scenarios, for example) and adaptation for some
  regions and sectors.

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Some Working Hypotheses

• Countries where the effects of climate change on
  development, access to resources, and equity
  measures are largest tend to be the same
  countries where adaptive capacity is the weakest.
• Stronger evidence now exists that developing
  countries are most vulnerable to climate change,
  climate variability, and other stresses because
  the effects of these stresses on weak
  determinants of adaptive capacity are the
  largest.

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Some Working Hypotheses, continued

• Working Group II can rigorously assess the joint
  the effectiveness of mitigation and adaptation
  for some regions, sectors, and/or systems where
  regional advantages in knowledge can be
  exploited.
• Working Group III should not yield to the
  temptation of using scattered local and regional
  estimates of climate impacts net of adaptation to
  produce unsubstantiated global portraits along
  specific scenarios whose regional manifestations
  are fraught with enormous uncertainty and thus
  highly suspect.

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A Result from the Scoping Meeting

• The synthesis of adaptation and mitigation is
  located in Working Group II
• This is the point of Chapter 18
• WE NEED SOME LITERATURE TO REVIEW!
• HELP WANTED

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A Perspective from the TAR

• Climate related damages that can be avoided by
  mitigation are the benefits of that mitigation
• Credible calculations of the benefits of
  mitigation must therefore recognize the potential
  that adaptation (autonomous and planned) could
  reduce damages and therefore the benefits of
  mitigation.

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Support for that Approach

• The environmental economics literature optimal
  intervention assumes efficient evasive activity
• The finance literature calculates risk premia
  net of diversifiable risk thereby assuming
  efficient diversification

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More from the TAR

• Adaptation may or may not reduce damages
  significantly
• SLR examples from developed coastlines (work on
  the US developed coastline shows significant cost
  savings from adaptation corroboration in
  subsequent global coverage by Nichols and
  friends)
• SLR examples from low-lying islands (Atoll states
  work by Adger shows abandonment only option to
  SLR, but earlier significant stress from other
  sources)

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Including Adaptation can be Critical

• It follows that adaptation cannot be ignored in
  any credible calculation of the benefit side of
  mitigation
• It passes the Lave test (factor of two)
• But we are not sure where, when and how.

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Two Asides from Neil Adger

• What can be attributed to SLR when atoll states
  are more vulnerable to extinction in the near
  term from internal development paths?
• How much mitigation would be forthcoming if the
  COP of the UNFCCC did not know which 5 of the
  180 members were facing extinction?

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A Potentially Unsettling Conclusion

• Asking for estimates of the economic value of
  mitigation might be wrong question.
• Thinking about mitigation in the context of a
  cost-benefit framework might be the wrong
  approach
• at least for a while
• This is why it is good that it is in WGII

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A Risk-based Approach can Accommodate the
Synthesis

• Thinking about both mitigation and adaptation as
  tools to reduce the risk of troublesome,
  intolerable, etc climate change makes them
  complements rather than substitutes, and we are
  out of the bind of simply cataloging win-win
  options.
• Mitigation is then a means of hedging against bad
  outcomes measured, net of adaptation, in terms of
  the likelihood of crossing critical thresholds.
• Adaptation is then a means by which systems can
  expand their coping ranges or delay their
  contraction.

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The Cost Side

• The cost side of mitigation (thought of as a
  risk-reducing tool whose outputs are measured in
  terms of a vector of impacts) is one of
  cost-effectiveness i.e., minimizing the cost of
  achieving certain objectives.
• The cost side of adaptation (thought of as a
  risk-reducing tools whose outputs are measured in
  terms of the likelihood of crossing thresholds)
  is one of opportunity cost informed by
  understanding how the determinants of adaptive
  capacity help or impede adaptation.

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Decision-makers Context

• Their job is to assess the relative opportunity
  costs of achieving specific risk reductions.
• Double causality is required to assess the
  effectiveness of mitigation.
• Single causality is sufficient to assess
  adaptation but not in a synthetic approach.
• Uncertainty becomes the reason for contemplating
  policy rather than the reason for contemplating
  delay.

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Can Science Support this Approach?Will there be
Literature to Assess?

• Recent MIT work (Webster, et. al., Uncertainty
  Analysis on Climate Change and Research Policy
  Response, Climatic Change, 2003) produces
  distributions of temperature change associated
  with a specific concentration threshold and
  translates that into SLR possibilities (at least
  for 2100, but could produce transcients).

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Will there be Literature?

• Recent Schneider work (See OECD Workshop on the
  Benefits of Climate Policy and forthcoming
  special issue of Global Environmental Change)
  produces distributions of an extreme event (THC
  shutdown) conditional on
• natural variables (climate sensitivity, etc)
• policy-related variables (the discount rate in an
  otherwise informed optimization exercise).

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Will there be Literature?

• Roger Jones (See OECD Workshop on the Benefits of
  Climate Policy and forthcoming special issue of
  Global Environmental Change) links site
  specific thresholds to adaptation and climate
  variables
• SLR illustration with the likelihood of crossing
  critical thresholds at specific years
• Episodes of coral bleaching and mortality with
  the likelihood of crossing critical ocean
  temperature thresholds at specific years

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The Implicit Scheme to Gain Access to
Considerations of Mitigation

• Temperature (climate variable) distributions ?
• Impact (vector) distributions ?
• Frequency of crossing critical thresholds
• Adding adaptation assesses the potential of
  changing the thresholds or the correlation
  between temperature (climate variable) and
  impact.
• Contemplating mitigation tracks changes in the
  temperature (climate variable) distribution

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Sea Level Rise is a Great Example As Usual

• Distributions of temperature change support
  distributions of SLR.
• Local subsidence combines with this to produce
  distributions of local SLR.
• Distributions of impacts (inundation, salt-water
  intrusion, vulnerability to coastal storms,
  etc.) follow from local modeling links to SLR.
• Adaptations are obvious (protect or not set-back
  rules, etc.)
• Mitigation effects distributions of temperature
  and SLR trajectories.

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A Second Approach Not Implausible Futures

• Not-implausible futures produce ranges of impacts
  across which adaptations must cope.
• The key on the adaptation side is to look for
  robust responses that handle many possible
  futures.
• The link to mitigation follows from changes in
  not implausible futures.
• The key on the mitigation side is to look at the
  effect on the range or timing of futures across
  which robustness might be measured.

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A New Example Flooding in Bangledesh

• Strzepek has calibrated a hydrologic model of the
  Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers to COSMIC output to
  produce trajectories of maximum monthly flow
  critical variables include
• Monthly precipitation and temperature (winter
  months) in highlands (determines timing and
  significance of snowmelt)
• Strzepek has also calibrated the likelihood of
  various degrees of flooding to maximum flows

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Preliminary Results 684 Scenarios
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Representative Scenarios
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An Alternative View of the Representative
Scenarios
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The Likelihood of Severe Flooding
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The Likelihood of Moderate Flooding
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The Likelihood of Modest Flooding
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Efficacy of Protecting Against Modest Flooding
Only
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Efficacy of Protecting against Modest and
Moderate Flooding
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Decrease in the Likelihood of Modest Flooding
with Moderate Protection
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Adding Mitigation

• Track the representative scenarios with
  mitigation imposed to achieve some sort of
  stabilization target.
• Track the differences in the likelihood of
  flooding, the efficacy of protection, and the
  necessary timing would protection be more
  effective (because peak flows are lower) or would
  the timing of the benefits change (forward or
  backward in time)?
• QUESTION STABILIZE WHAT?

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Multiple Stabilization OptionsTwo Examples

• Limit concentrations temperature uncertainty
  persists, particularly with 5 to 10 of the tail
  of the cumulative probability distribution at 9
  degrees or more.
• Limit temperatures produces significant
  uncertainty about the cost of compliance.
• Implementation uncertainty the ability to
  achieve the target and/or effect midcourse
  corrections contingent on measuring something and
  understanding causality.

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In Any Case One Way Forward

• Analysis of mitigation should focus on
  cost-effectiveness, the ability to make
  mid-course corrections, and implementation
  uncertainty.
• Analysis of adaptation should focus on
  understanding the roles played by the various
  determinants of adaptive capacity and the
  antecedents of robust options.

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A Two Way Street

• Adaptation must be included in any assessment of
  what may or may not be accomplished by mitigation
  in terms reducing the likelihood crossing
  critical impact thresholds.
• The degree to which mitigation complements
  adaptation in reducing those likelihoods must be
  explored with full recognition of associated
  uncertainties in the outcome of mitigation.