Characterizing loss and damage from climate change

Abstract

Item 10 of the provisional agenda Approaches to address loss and damage associated with climate change impacts in developing countries that are particularly vulnerable to the adverse effects of climate change to enhance adaptive capacity 1-Activities to be undertaken under the work programme A literature review on the topics in the context of thematic area 2 of the work programme on loss and damage: a range of approaches to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change Note by the secretariat Summary This literature review presents findings from available scientific evidence and other documentation on a range of approaches employed today in four regions of the world to address loss and damage associated with the adverse effects of climate change. The literature review focuses on the types of approach and their levels of application, in particular examining the foundational resource requirements and cost-effectiveness of and the lessons learned from such approaches. The review follows a regional perspective, corresponding to the regional expert meetings for Africa, Latin America, Asia, and small island developing States which have taken place during 2012 as components of the work programme on loss and damage under the Subsidiary Body for Implementation. 1 Decision 1/CP.16, paragraphs 26-29.

A Common Framework for Approaches to Extreme Event Attribution

“…The risk-based approach to extreme event attribution is inherently probabilistic and does not claim to attribute the specific event that inspired the study; indeed, in [12], the observed event was excluded from the analysis to avoid selection bias, and the results concerned observed changes prior to the event itself, and expected future changes, rather than the event itself. Such analyses are clearly useful for policy and planning, and potentially also for liability [11,44], if they can be established to be credible. However, for weather-related extremes, converting a weather question into a climate question by abstracting the particular event to an event class (e.g.…”

Climate change, climate justice and the application of probabilistic event attribution to summer heat extremes in the California Central Valley

“…Assessing the impact of climatic and other drivers of change requires a multi-disciplinary approach for careful attribution research (Huggel et al 2013;Hansen et al 2015). Here we first present the climate results from the simulations and then focus on trends most relevant for public health risks associated with extreme heat.…”

“…The fact that multiple meteorological variables, and factors such as vulnerability, exposure, and adaptation (Huggel et al 2013;IPCC 2012) influenced the public health and other outcomes of the 2006 severe heat wave suggests that a multivariate approach is required to assess the impact of this event (Fischer and Knutti 2012). High humidity heat waves, such as the 2006 event, have been found to be especially dangerous, accounting for 66 % of hospitalizations associated with heat waves in the Central Valley (Guirguis et al 2014).…”

“…Allen (2003) introduced the notion of utilizing fractional attribution and posed an interesting question: should society hold certain non-state entities, such as major industrial emitters or producers of carbon, accountable for losses and damages incurred by climate change? James et al (2014) argued that PEA could be relevant to the questions of international responsibility for loss and damage associated with extreme events affecting developing nations. Here it is argued that PEA can also be applied to address the climate justice concerns of populations within developed nations who are disproportionately exposed to climate risks.…”

“…PEA can be applied within the context of addressing inequities in the human costs of climate change given its ability to provide fractional attribution of an event (James et al 2014;Thompson and Otto 2015). For example, recent attribution research on record-breaking heat extremes in Russia , southeast Europe (Sippel and Otto 2014) and Texas focus on regions and populations that were ill-prepared for these extremes, experiencing both heat-health impacts and losses in agricultural productivity.…”