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Methods and Tools IPCC TAR WGII Chapter 2

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Title: Methods and Tools IPCC TAR WGII Chapter 2


1
Methods and Tools - IPCC TAR WGII (Chapter 2)
  • Gary Yohe
  • Professor of Economics
  • Wesleyan University
  • June 11, 2001

2
QUESTIONS RAISED IN THE CHAPTER
  • Detecting the current effects of climate change
    (and climate variability)
  • Anticipating, estimating, and integrating future
    effects of climate change (and climate
    variability)
  • Valuing and costing impacts and adaptations
  • Expressing and characterizing uncertainties
  • Reflecting appropriate frameworks for
    decision-making.

3
The Vulnerability Context of Adaptive Capacity
  • Vulnerability (a vector V) is a function of
    exposure (to multiple stresses - a vector E),
    sensitivity (a similarly dimensioned vector S),
    and adaptive capacity (A) so
  • V F E(A) S(A)
  • Adaptive capacity may be quantified to a scalor,
    but it has multiple determinants Di
  • A AC D1 , , D8

4
The Determinants of Adaptive Capacity
  • Range of adaptation options
  • Availability and distribution of resources
  • Structure of institutions and decision-making
    processes
  • Stock and distribution of human capital
  • Stock of social capital
  • Access to risk spreading processes and mechanisms
  • Ability to process information and the
    credibility of decisions
  • Public perception of exposure, sensitivity and
    attribution

5
Site Specificity and Path Dependence - The Scale
of Determinants
  • Applicable options are determined on a micro
    scale, but the list of possibilities may come
    from macro-scale processes like this one
  • The next 5 determinants have macro-scale roots,
    but micro-scale manifestations
  • Resources and their distribution
  • Institutional structure decision-making
  • Human capital
  • Social capital
  • Access to risk spreading

6
Scale Considerations, Continued
  • Information management may have macro-scale
    foundations, but it has fundamental micro-scale
    import.
  • Public perception of attribution should similarly
    be determined on a micro-scale even if there are
    influences from outside and potential sources of
    information have a macro scale. The issue is
    credibility and when micro-scale actors look for
    credible information.

7
Implications for the Adaptation Methods and the
Policy Framework
  • The local implications of macro-scale
    determinants are their most important
    characteristics, and working the links across
    scales can add clout by expanding the scope of
    influence.
  • The effects of most if not all of the
    determinants of adaptive capacity can be traced
    through their implications for specific
    adaptation options.
  • Assessing overall vulnerability through organized
    and determinant-based considerations of the
    abilities of available options to influence
    sensitivity or exposure could be a very effective
    foundation for a methods and policy frameworks.

8
Adaptation Options and Coping Capacity
  • The critical link in each context can be the
    definition of thresholds that define the
    boundaries of coping capacity against variability
    in the local environment.
  • It follows that exploring how each option might
    be able to change those thresholds or variability
    to influence exposure and/or sensitivity is
    critical.
  • The roles of other determinants in impeding or
    enhancing those abilities must also be
    recognized.
  • And systematic interactions across determinants
    and adaptation options cannot be ignored.

9
Returning to the Questions
  • Detection informs our understanding about
    exposure and sensitivity.
  • Anticipation, estimation and integration of
    future effects does the same
  • Anticipation takes detection into the future to
  • identify stresses.
  • Estimation adds detail to characterizations of
    the future.
  • Integration brings the interactions of multiple
    stresses into focus.

10
Integrating Multiple Stresses
  • Some stresses have common sources - another place
    where macro scale processes can be identified and
    exploited.
  • Other stresses have different sources, but are
    they positively or negatively correlated? Or are
    they independent?
  • Looking endogenously for anthropogenic sources
    can highlight new suites of adaptive options.

11
More on the questions
  • Valuation and costing impacts and adaptations
    play into evaluations of options, but currency is
    not necessarily the only metric
  • Schneiders 5 metrics monetary loss, human
    life
  • quality of life, loss of species and
    bioversity, and
  • (in)equity and the distribution of well-being
  • and both can play a role in assessing the
    significance of resource availability and their
    distribution.

12
More on the questions
  • Uncertainty plays a role in
  • Institutions - how do they cope with
    uncertainty?
  • The significance and structure of risk
    spreading mechanisms.
  • Decision-makers and public perception - how do
    the players sort the signal from the noise?

13
Uncertainty and Coping Capacity
  • Looking at climate variability provides early
    warning to not-implausible futures and abrupt
    impacts of climate change.
  • Focusing on the ability of adaptation options to
    manipulate the coping capacity as well as
    variability offers a way to include uncertainty
    into the analysis.
  • This is the link that brings short-term planning
    horizons into the context of long-term stresses
    like climate change.

14
Uncertainty and Analysts
  • Notwithstanding our considerable abilities, the
    output of the impact and adaptation analysis
    and/or a Policy Framework must be cast in terms
    of underlying uncertainty
  • Ranges of possible outputs.
  • Representations of multiple moments.
  • Consideration of robustness in assessment
  • and adaptation.

15
More on the questions
  • Understanding of decision analytic frameworks and
    their local, path dependent application informs
    our understanding of
  • Institutions
  • Human and social capital
  • Positive and normative analysis of risk
    spreading
  • mechanisms

16
Topic Organization of Chapter 2
  • Detection (species and managed systems)
  • Anticipating change
  • Integrated assessment
  • Cost and valuation methods
  • Representing uncertainty
  • Decision-analytic frameworks

17
Questions versus Sections in Chapter 2
18
Topics Detection
  • There are two questions of attribution
  • Anthropogenic forces are changing the climate
  • Climate change is have an impact
  • Fingerprint argument based on global congruence -
    a basis of considerable controversy.
  • Still, for present purposes, the second
    attribution critical for framing adaptation.
  • Nonetheless, the first attribution important in
    evaluating future.

19
Anticipating Future Impacts
  • Scenarios define baselines and define scales.
  • This is perhaps backwards for adaptation work.
  • Integration in Chapter 2 tends to focus on
    feedbacks and the role that vulnerability pays in
    pushing mitigation.
  • This is not the type of integration needed
    here.
  • Attention is nonetheless drawn to climate
    variability and extremes.
  • Exactly, and the link to adaptive capacity
    made.
  • Focus attention on variability, thresholds,
    coping
  • capacity and abrupt impacts of climate change.

20
Integrated Assessment
  • Integrated assessment broadly defined is not
    necessarily linear from beginning to end.
  • IA methods can help with
  • multiple stresses (their common sources and/or
  • diversity)
  • interactions of adaptation options
  • delineating the operative scales of
    determinants
  • the definition of location specifics and path
  • dependence.

21
Cost and valuation methods
  • All concepts are based on the notion of
    opportunity cost.
  • This foundation can accommodate multiple metrics.
  • Costing methods can provide some answers and
    insights, but not all e.g., the cost and sources
    of inequity.
  • Other initiatives on quantifying monetary
    estimates of non-market impacts (through direct
    and indirect methods) may not be widely
    applicable.
  • This means that cost-benefit analysis is not the
    only game in town. Ultimately, though, there
    needs to be some assessment of tradeoffs across
    values attached to specific metrics.

22
This is the ultimate context for opportunity
cost. This is the ultimate context for
opportunity cost.
  • This is the ultimate context for opportunity cost.

23
Uncertainty
  • Sources of Uncertainty
  • Missing data or errors in data and noise.
  • Random sampling error and/or selection bias.
  • Known processes with unknown functional forms.
  • Known structures but unknown parameters.
  • Structural change over time.
  • Ambiguous concepts or techniques.
  • Spatial or temporal scale mismatches.
  • Humans.

24
Cascading Uncertainty
  • This is a widely accepted notion that integration
    across multiple systems amplifies uncertainty.
  • Adaptation based analysis from second attribution
    short-circuits some of the cascadeas long as
    adaptive capacity analyses consider the
    robustness of that capacity and the derivative
    vulnerability across a range of not-implausible
    scenarios regardless of attributed probabilities
    (these may not be known and the tails might be
    wide).

25
Decision Analytic Frameworks
  • Highlights formal distinctions between
  • Cost-benefit criteria.
  • Precautionary criteria.
  • Broad-based decision analysis.
  • Risk analysis.
  • Cost-effectiveness.
  • Policy exercises.
  • Adaptive capacity focus suggests that local
    specificity and path dependence determine the DAG

26
Take-Home Messages
  • Multiple tools exist, but they may not be fully
    adept at handling adaptation/impacts analysis.
  • While macro-scale processes work in most if not
    all parts of the world, micro-scale processes are
    critical and they may not fit any specific
    context.
  • Nonetheless, there will be common insights,
    common frustrations, and common methodology.

27
Let many flowers bloom, and
  • convene periodically to compare notes, share war
    stories, and otherwise collaborate without the
    requirement of producing a comprehensive
    document.
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