UN climate negotiations should aim for more funding
LONDON—Scientists, led by a former cochairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warned that the United Nations negotiations aimed at tackling climate change are based on substantial underestimates of what it will cost to adapt to its impacts.
The real costs of adaptation are likely to be two to three times greater than estimates made by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said Prof. Martin Parry and colleagues in a new report published by the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.
The report, launched over the weekend, added that costs would be even more when the full range of climate impacts on human activities is considered.
Parry and colleagues warned that the underestimate of the cost of adaptation threatens to weaken the outcome of UNFCCC negotiations, which are due to culminate in Copenhagen in December with a global deal aimed at tackling climate change.
“The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate-change agreement,” said Parry, visiting research fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London. “But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed.”
The UNFCCC has estimated annual global costs of adapting to climate change to be $40 billion to $170 billion, or the cost of about three Olympic Games a year.
But the report’s authors warn that these estimates were produced too quickly and did not include key sectors, such as energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining, tourism and ecosystems. Other sectors that the UNFCCC included were only partially covered, the scientists said.
“Just looking in depth at the sectors the UNFCCC did study, we estimate adaptation costs to be two to three higher, and when you include the sectors the UNFCCC left out, the true cost is probably much greater,” warned Parry, who cochaired the IPCC working group on impacts, vulnerability and adaptation between 2002 and 2008.
The new report’s key findings include:
Water: The UNFCCC estimate of $11 billion excluded costs of adapting to floods and assumes no costs for transferring water within nations from areas of surplus to areas of deficit. The underestimate could be substantial, according to the new report.
Health: The UNFCCC estimate of $5 billion excluded developed nations, and assessed only malaria, diarrhea and malnutrition. This could cover only 30 percent to 50 percent of the global total disease burden, according to the new report.
Infrastructure: The UNFCCC estimate of $8 billion to $130 billion assumed that low levels of investment in infrastructure will continue to characterize development in Africa and other relatively poor parts of the world.
But the new report pointed out that such investment must increase in order to reduce poverty and, thus, avoid continuing high levels of vulnerability to climate change. It said the costs of adapting this upgraded infrastructure to climate change could be eight times more costly than the higher estimates predicted by the UNFCCC.
Coastal zones: The UNFCCC estimate of $11 billion excluded increased-storm intensity and used low IPCC predictions of sea-level rise. Considering research on sea-level rise published since the 2007 IPCC report, and including storms, the new report suggests costs could be about three times greater than predicted.
Ecosystems: The UNFCCC excluded from its estimates the costs of protecting ecosystems and the services they can provide for human society. The new report concludes that this is an important source of underestimation, which could cost over $350 billion, including both protected and non-protected areas.
The report called for detailed case studies of what adaptation costs will be, and pointed out that the few that already exist suggested that costs will be considerable.
It added that the UNFCCC estimates do not include the cost of bearing “residual damage” that will arise from situations where adaptation is not technically feasible or simply too expensive.
“Finance is the key that will unlock the negotiations in Copenhagen but if governments are working with the wrong numbers, we could end up with a false deal that fails to cover the costs of adaptation to climate change,” said Camilla Toulmin, director of IIED, which copublished the report.
Prof. Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London, said: “The costs of adapting to live with a changing climate are very uncertain. However, this new report suggests that previous attempts to figure out the costs have drastically under-estimated how expensive this could be. With such large sums potentially involved, the pressure to act now to reduce the extent of climate change is greater than ever.”
The new report was reviewed by seven of the world’s foremost adaptation scientists, including the lead authors of the original UNFCCC study. Following this, close to 100 adaptation-policy and research experts were invited to comment on the prepublication draft.
Business Mirror
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