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This report addresses the urgent issue of climate-related losses and damages. Climate change is driving fundamental changes to the planet with adverse impacts on human livelihoods and well-being, putting development gains at risk.
Climate change threatens the economy of the United States in myriad ways, including increased flooding and storm damage, altered crop yields, lost labor productivity, higher crime, reshaped public-health patterns, and strained energy systems, among many other effects. Combining the latest climate models, state-of-the-art econometric research on human responses to climate, and cutting-edge private-sector risk-assessment tools, Economic Risks of Climate Change: An American Prospectus crafts a game-changing profile of the economic risks of climate change in the United States. This prospectus is based on a critically acclaimed independent assessment of the economic risks posed by climate change commissioned by the Risky Business Project. With new contributions from Karen Fisher-Vanden, Michael Greenstone, Geoffrey Heal, Michael Oppenheimer, and Nicholas Stern and Bob Ward, as well as a foreword from Risky Business cochairs Michael Bloomberg, Henry Paulson, and Thomas Steyer, the book speaks to scientists, researchers, scholars, activists, and policy makers. It depicts the distribution of escalating climate-change risk across the country and assesses its effects on aspects of the economy as varied as hurricane damages and violent crime. Beautifully illustrated and accessibly written, this book is an essential tool for helping businesses and governments prepare for the future.
This open access book highlights the complexities around making adaptation decisions and building resilience in the face of climate risk. It is based on experiences in sub-Saharan Africa through the Future Climate For Africa (FCFA) applied research programme. It begins by dealing with underlying principles and structures designed to facilitate effective engagement about climate risk, including the robustness of information and the construction of knowledge through co-production. Chapters then move on to explore examples of using climate information to inform adaptation and resilience through early warning, river basin development, urban planning and rural livelihoods based in a variety of contexts. These insights inform new ways to promote action in policy and praxis through the blending of knowledge from multiple disciplines, including climate science that provides understanding of future climate risk and the social science of response through adaptation. The book will be of interest to advanced undergraduate students and postgraduate students, researchers, policy makers and practitioners in geography, environment, international development and related disciplines.
This book presents research related to energy and environmental technologies in the context of market liberalization and global warming. It focuses on the development and efficient use of alternative energy sources, implementation of sustainable energy policies, power generation, and energy finance. Advances in Managing Energy and Climate Risks provides readers with the necessary information to use energy sources more efficiently, discover cleaner energy sources and their applications, and urge consumers and producers to make changes to reach a carbon-neutral economy through financial, technological, regulatory and tax incentives.
This book elaborates on different aspects of the decision making process concerning the management of climate risk in museums and historic houses. The goal of this publication is to assist collection managers and caretakers by providing information that will allow responsible decisions about the museum indoor climate to be made. The focus is not only on the outcome, but also on the equally important process that leads to that outcome. The different steps contribute significantly to the understanding of the needs of movable and immovable heritage. The decision making process to determine the requirements for the museum indoor climate includes nine steps: Step 1. The process to make a balanced decision starts by clarifying the decision context and evaluating what is important to the decision maker by developing clear objectives. In Step 2 the value of all heritage assets that are affected by the decision are evaluated and the significance of the building and the movable collection is made explicit. Step 3. The climate risks to the moveable collection are assessed. Step 4: Those parts of the building that are considered valuable and susceptible to certain climate conditions are identified. Step 5. The human comfort needs for visitors and staff are expressed. Step 6: To understand the indoor climate, the building physics are explored. Step 7. The climate specifications derived from step 3 to 5 are weighed and for each climate zone the optimal climate conditions are specified. Step 8: Within the value framework established in Step 1, the options to optimize the indoor climate are considered and selected. Step 9: All options to reduce the climate collection risks are evaluated by the objectives established in Step 1.
Why aren’t we investing more in disaster resilience, despite the rising costs of disaster events? This book argues that decision-makers in governments, businesses, households, and development agencies tend to focus on avoiding losses from disasters, and perceive the return on investment as uncertain – only realised if a somewhat unlikely disaster event actually happens. This book develops a new business case for investment based on the multiple dividends of resilience. This looks beyond only avoided losses (the first dividend) to the wider benefits gained independently of whether or not the disaster event occurs. These include unleashing entrepreneurial activities and productive investments by lowering the looming threat of losses from disasters and enabling businesses, farmers and homeowners to take positive risks (the second dividend); and co-benefits of resilience measures beyond just disaster risk (the third dividend), such as flood embankments in Bangladesh that double as roads, or wetlands in Colombo that reduce urban heat extremes.
This book addresses the issue of climate change risks and hazards holistically. Climate change adaptation aims at managing climate risks and hazards to an acceptable level, taking advantage of any positive opportunities that may arise. At the same time, developing suitable responses to hazards for communities and users of climate services is important in ensuring the success of adaptation measures. But despite this, knowledge about adaptation options, including possible actions that can be implemented to improve adaptation and reduce the impacts of climate change hazards, is still limited. Addressing this need, the book presents studies and research findings and offers a catalogue of potential adaptation options that can be explored. It also includes case studies providing illustrative and inspiring examples of how we can adapt to a changing climate.
Providing an up-to-date synthesis of all knowledge relevant to the climate change issue, this book ranges from the basic science documenting the need for policy action to the technologies, economic instruments and political strategies that can be employed in response to climate change. Ethical and cultural issues constraining the societal response to climate change are also discussed. This book provides a handbook for those who want to understand and contribute to meeting this challenge. It covers a very wide range of disciplines - core biophysical sciences involved with climate change (geosciences, atmospheric sciences, ocean sciences, ecology/biology) as well as economics, political science, health sciences, institutions and governance, sociology, ethics and philosophy, and engineering. As such it will be invaluable for a wide range of researchers and professionals wanting a cutting-edge synthesis of climate change issues, and for advanced student courses on climate change.
A comprehensive interdisciplinary exploration of climate risks to water security for students, researchers, civil and environmental engineers, and management professionals.
