Towards a Tipping Point in Responding to Change: Rising Costs, Fewer Options for Arctic and Global Societies

Abstract

Climate change incurs costs, but government adaptation budgets are limited. Beyond a certain point, individuals must bear the costs or adapt to new circumstances, creating political-economic tipping points that we explore in three examples. First, many Alaska Native villages are threatened by erosion, but relocation is expensive. To date, critically threatened villages have not yet been relocated, suggesting that we may already have reached a political-economic tipping point. Second, forest fires shape landscape and ecological characteristics in interior Alaska. Climate-driven changes in fire regime require increased fire-fighting resources to maintain current patterns of vegetation and land use, but these resources appear to be less and less available, indicating an approaching tipping point. Third, rapid sea level rise, for example from accelerated melting of the Greenland ice sheet, will create a choice between protection and abandonment for coastal regions throughout the world, a potential global tipping point comparable to those now faced by Arctic communities. The examples illustrate the basic idea that if costs of response increase more quickly than available resources, then society has fewer and fewer options as time passes.

Climate change, ecosystem services, and costs of action and inaction: scoping the interface

“…Declining provisioning services (e.g., food, fish, and forage provision) and the examples in forest fire regulation show that the longer the period of inaction, the greater the damage cost. This reinforces the idea that social options for addressing climate change diminish over time if the costs of response increase faster than available resources . In favor of early action, is the risk of irreversible changes, as in the case of damages to cultural services, such as World Heritage sites due to climate‐induced alteration of heritage biotas or irreversible biodiversity losses.…”

Climigration? Population and climate change in Arctic Alaska

“…Thawing permafrost, reduced shore protection from sea ice, and increasing river flows are consequences of Arctic climate change that impact these communities (Overpeck et al 2005; NOAA 2015). Relocation seems inevitable given their geographical vulnerability, but that is not happening so far because of social resistance, difficulty, and high costs (GAO 2009; Huntington et al 2012). New governance and institutional strategies are needed to deal with this new category of displacement (Bronen and Chapin 2013; Marino 2012, 2015).…”

Understanding and Mitigating the Impacts of Massive Relocations Due to Disasters

“…Lindell et al (2011) give estimates on the order of $100/day for hurricane evacuations; if that estimate is applicable even to long relocations, that would give correspond to roughly $350,000/year (although one would expect costs to fall over time, as less costly forms of housing can be arranged). More dramatically, Huntington et al (2012) cites costs of up to $1 million per person when entire villages need to be relocated, based on estimates by the Army Corps of Engineers and documented by the Government Accountability Office (2003). Costs for relocating small communities in Louisiana and Alaska are of the same order of magnitude (Davenport and Robertson 2016;Mele and Victor 2016), and it is estimated that roughly 30 towns in Alaska may be Bat imminent risk of destruction^in the next few decades (Goode 2016).…”

“…Hauer et al observed that Bthe absence of protective measures could lead to US population movements of a magnitude similar to the twentieth century Great Migration of southern African-Americans.^Although detailed economic impact analyses are not provided, Hauer et al estimate that the direct cost of relocating so many people could approach $14 trillion, not including any indirect economic losses. As noted by Huntington et al (2012), BSpending up to US $1 million per person to respond to one manifestation of climate change is clearly a major commitment…, and may be politically untenable.Î…”