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The impacts of climate change on migration are expected to dramatically shift existing paradigms in the field of human mobility studies. As trends indicate the intensification of the adverse effects of climate change, so too are related climate displacement and migration forecasted to develop into a full-blown international crisis. In the face of these developments, this paper contributes to climate migration research by uncovering how the effects of climate change-related natural disasters form migration decisions, using Germany’s deadly 2021 Ahr Valley flood for an in-depth and scholarly study. Synthesizing an analysis of the flood event and interviews with flood victims results in findings that suggest that if those affected by the flood had extensive local social networks, received sufficient government aid, and did not suffer adverse health effects, the likelihood increased that they would remain in the Ahr Valley despite the elevated risk of such a flood event reoccurring in the future and the appending costs thereof. These results provide policymakers with insights they can use toward policy designs that alleviate the adverse effects future climate migration is predicted to carry.

The prospect of Russia’s economic development will be inextricably bound up with the country’s success in the implementation of global climate initiatives. The strategy for the development of the national economy with a low level of greenhouse gas emissions, which is currently being formed, implies the fullest use of the potential for carbon sequestration by forest ecosystems, including through the implementation of various forest-climatic projects. The article shows that despite the world’s largest forest areas, the carbon-absorbing capacity of Russian forests cannot balance anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions. Using the examples of several regions of the Volga region and Siberia, the spatial dynamics of the forest carbon budget in the 2010s is considered. For the regions of Siberia rich in boreal forests, there is a significant disproportion between the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of forest resources and the absorbing capacity, which is explained by the ineffective forestry regime in the territory and the high intensity of forest disturbances. Taking into account the fact that building an effective system for combating forest fires and insect pests requires very voluminous and expensive measures, the effectiveness of which is difficult to assess, the above illustrations of the current situation lead to the idea that, in addition to using the potential for increasing carbon sequestration in traditional forest regions in the implementation of forest-climatic projects should pay attention to sparsely forested areas.

In 2018 William Nordhaus was awarded the Nobel Prize in economics for his contributions to the macroeconomics of climate change. Nevertheless, Nordhaus since the early 1970s was engaged in an academic struggle to contrast the major supporters of The Limits to Growth. Later, though acknowledging some impact of climate change on economic activity and suggesting taxes on greenhouse emissions, he systematically opposed pessimistic views concerning global warming; thus putting off governmental action. The aim of this paper is to enquire into Nordhaus’s contributions to the economics of climate change, and their impact on academic and public debates.

ResumenEste documento explora con motivación didáctica un modelo simple que expone algunos elementos básicos de la economía del cambio climático que han suscitado debate académico en la última década. A raíz de la publicación en 2006 del llamado Reporte Stern, la literatura académica ha centrado el debate en dos aspectos fundamentales de la modelación de ese problema global: la elección particular de algunos parámetros como microfundamentos que reflejan comportamientos más bien éticos sobre el tratamiento del futuro y la desigualdad, y la modelación de los aspectos estocásticos asociados a fenómenos que ocurren en el futuro relativamente distante. Este documento expone con un modelo sencillo los elementos asociados al primer aspecto. La pretensión es la de acercar a los estudiantes de economía algunas de las consecuencias éticas y analíticas del proceder convencional en la teoría económica dedicada al estudio del problema climático global. A esta breve introducción siguen tres secciones: la primera expone el modelo de referencia con una implementación numérica ilustrativa, la segunda discute asuntos asociados al descuento del futuro y las nociones de equilibrio utilizadas en la modelación estándar, y la tercera presenta brevemente una discusión sobre la consistencia del proceder paramétrico convencional. Una última sección incluye breves reflexiones a modo de cierre.AbstractThis paper explores a simple model that highlights for a wider audience some of the main elements of the economics of climate change that have motivated academic debate over the last decade. After the release in 2006 of the Stern Report, academic economists have argued over two crucial aspects involved in economic modeling of this global problem: the particular choice as microfoundations of certain parameters describing ethical behaviors regarding both the future and inequality, and the particular strategies for modeling variables that exhibit stochastic nature in the distant future. The simple model herein exposed is able to deal with many of the issued of the first aspect. The motivation is to make available to students of economics some of the ethical and analytical consequences of economic theory's conventional strategy utilized in models to analyze the economics of global climate change. The first section of the paper presents an exhibit of the model that includes a numerical representation for illustration purposes. Section two links the choice over the discount rate to two notions of economic equilibrium. Section three presents a brief discussion on the consistency of the parametrical choices conventionally made in the economic literature on climate change. Finally, some words are included for concluding purposes.

Susceptibility of global economic network to production loss has increased since the beginning of this century., Assessing global impacts of unexpected meteorological events in an increasingly connected world economy is important for estimating the costs of climate change. We show that since the beginning of the 21st century, the structural evolution of the global supply network has been such as to foster an increase of climate-related production losses. We compute first- and higher-order losses from heat stress–induced reductions in productivity under changing economic and climatic conditions between 1991 and 2011. Since 2001, the economic connectivity has augmented in such a way as to facilitate the cascading of production loss. The influence of this structural change has dominated over the effect of the comparably weak climate warming during this decade. Thus, particularly under future warming, the intensification of international trade has the potential to amplify climate losses if no adaptation measures are taken.

Climate change will exacerbate the challenges associated with environmental conditions, especially weather variability and extremes, in developing countries. These challenges play important, if as yet poorly understood roles in the development prospects of affected regions. As such, climate change reinforces the development case for investment in disaster risk management. Uncertainty about how climate change will affect particular locations makes optimal investment planning more difficult. In particular, the inability to derive meaningful probabilities from climate models limits the usefulness of standard project evaluation techniques, such as cost-benefit analysis. Although the deep uncertainty associated with climate change complicates disaster risk management investment decisions, the analysis presented here shows that these considerations are only relevant for a relatively limited set of investment circumstances. The paper offers a simple decision framework that enables policy makers to identify the particular circumstances under which uncertainty about future climate change becomes critical for disaster risk management investment decisions. Accounting for climate uncertainty is likely to shift the optimal balance of disaster risk management strategies toward more flexible, low-regret type interventions, especially those that seek to promote "development first" or "risk-coping" objectives. Such investments are likely to confer additional development dividends, regardless of the climate future that materializes in a given location. Importantly, the analysis here also demonstrates that climate uncertainty does not necessarily motivate a "wait and see" approach. Instead, where opportunities exist to avail of adaptation co-benefits, climate uncertainty provides additional motivation for early investment in disaster risk management initiatives.

The paper consists of a summary of the main sources of uncertainty about climate change, and a discussion of the major implications for economic analysis and the formulation of climate policy. Uncertainty typically implies that the optimal policy is more risk-averse than otherwise, and therefore enhances the case for action to mitigate climate change.

The impacts of climate change on poverty depend on the magnitude of climate change, but also on demographic and socioeconomic trends. An analysis of hundreds of baseline scenarios for future economic development in the absence of climate change in 92 countries shows that the drivers of poverty eradication differ across countries. Two representative scenarios are selected from these hundreds. One scenario is optimistic regarding poverty and is labeled “prosperity;” the other scenario is pessimistic and labeled “poverty.” Results from sector analyses of climate change impacts—in agriculture, health, and natural disasters—are introduced in the two scenarios. By 2030, climate change is found to have a significant impact on poverty, especially through higher food prices and reduction of agricultural production in Africa and South Asia, and through health in all regions. But the magnitude of these impacts depends on development choices. In the prosperity scenario with rapid, inclusive, and climate-informed development, climate change increases poverty by between 3 million and 16 million in 2030. The increase in poverty reaches between 35 million and 122 million if development is delayed and less inclusive (the poverty scenario).

Recent economic research documents a range of adverse welfare consequences from extreme heat stress, including health, labor productivity, and direct consumption disutility impacts. Without rapid adaptation, climate change will increase the burden of heat stress experienced by much of the world’s population in the coming decades. What will the distributional consequences of this added heat stress be, and how might this affect optimal climate policy? Using detailed survey data of household wealth in 690,745 households across 52 countries, this paper finds evidence suggesting that the welfare impacts of added heat stress caused by climate change may be regressive. Specifically, the analysis finds that poorer households tend to be located in hotter locations across and within countries, and poorer individuals are more likely to work in occupations with greater exposure to the elements not only across but also within countries. These findings—combined with the fact that current social cost of carbon estimates do not include climate damages arising from the productivity impacts of heat stress—suggest that optimal climate policy, especially when allowing for declining marginal utility of consumption, involves more stringent abatement than currently suggested, and that redistributive adaptation policies may be required to reduce the mechanical inequities in welfare impacts arising from climate change.

Focusing on the Economics of Climate Change (ECC), this thesis is a case study in the socio-historical analysis of scientific fields. In other words, we study the socio-genesis and institutionalization of this field of research, since its emergence in the mid-1970 until today. Our study is based on both quantitative and qualitative methods. Bibliometric analyzes were conducted on a corpus of scientific publications, and were supplemented by interviews and document analysis. By studying the development and structuration of the ECC, we understand to what extent they are consistent with existing analytical frameworks (whether they are specific to the economy or deal with field of knowledge production in general ). Then a special focus on issues of interdisciplinarity and expertise allows to highlight the functioning of the ECC and improve understanding of its dynamics. This examination of the ECC is also considered as a prerequisite for further discussion about scientific and public controversy about global warming. Indeed, scientific and public controversies on global warming (and researchers studying them) mainly focus on climate science, leaving little room for economic issues. Yet these are crucial in the process of decision making and the formulation of climate policies. So we focused our attention on the agreements and disagreements in the community of the ECC. Then, a typology of potential controversy ECC is proposed. It is followed by two case studies: the controversy over the Stern Review on and around the Richard Tol model. Their analysis allows to highlight the issues of categorization and legitimation of terms of the debate for the actors themselves.; S'intéressant à l'Économie des changements Climatiques (ECC), cette thèse constitue une étude de cas dans les analyse socio-historiques des champs scientifiques. En d'autres termes, nous étudions la sociogenèse et l'institutionnalisation de ce domaine de recherche, depuis son émergence au milieu des année 1970, jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Notre étude repose à la fois sur des méthodes quantitatives et qualitatives. Des analyses bibliométriques ont été menées sur un corpus de publications scientifiques, et furent complétées par des entretiens et analyses de documents. En étudiant les modalités du développement et de la structuration de l'ECC, nous comprenons dans quelle mesure elles concordent avec les cadres d'analyse existants (qu'ils soient spécifiques à l'économie ou bien concernent les champs de production des connaissances en général). Ensuite, un focalisation particulière sur les questions de l'interdisciplinarité et de l'expertise permet de mettre en relief le fonctionnement de l'ECC et d'améliorer la compréhension de ses dynamiques. Cet examen de l'ECC est également envisagé comme préalable à l'approfondissement des réflexions sur les ressorts des controverses scientifiques et publiques sur le réchauffement planétaire. En effet, les controverses scientifiques et publiques sur le réchauffement planétaire. En effet, les controverses scientifiques et publiques (et les chercheurs qui les étudient) se focalisent essentiellement sur les sciences du climat, laissant peu de place aux questions économiques. Pourtant, ces dernières sont cruciales dans le processus de prise de décision et la formulation des politiques climatiques. Nous avons donc focalisé notre attention sur les accords et désaccords dans la communauté de l'ECC. Puis, une typologie des controverses potentielles en ECC est proposée. Elle est suivie de deux études de cas : la controverse sur le Rapport Stern et celle autour du modèle de Richard Tol. Leur analyse permet de mettre en relief les enjeux de catégorisation et d'imposition des termes légitimes du débat pour les acteurs eux-mêmes.

The current report is a milestone for preparing the Romanian climate change (CC) action plan. A CC action plan should be based on the consolidation and coordination of both mitigation and adaptation measures and options. An important step in the elaboration of such a plan is the selection of appropriate actions. This selection requires the involvement of competent authorities in the key sectors, including, in the case of Romania, transport, energy, urban, water, agriculture, and forestry. The screening approaches are used to facilitate a transparent decision-making process in various fields such as environmental impacts, dangerous substances, environmental footprint of products, or CC actions. The report is structured as follows: section one gives introduction. Section two summarizes the usage of screening approaches in the field of CC and environment by different European Union (EU) member states and by the European Commission. Section three discusses the main categories of mitigation and adaption measures that can be included in a CC action plan. Section four presents the screening approach and process and describes several complementary tools (multi-criteria analysis, cost-benefit analysis (CBA), cost effectiveness analysis (CEA), modeling) that should be used when the screening approach is insufficient. Section five provides a conclusion and key recommendations.

Adaptation to human-induced climate change is currently receiving a lot of attention in international development circles. But throughout human existence, natural resource-dependent people have exploited and coped with the effects of climate variability on the ecosystems from which they derive a living. Learning from this experience can help inform the design of appropriate policies for responding to human-induced climate change. This paper presents the results of a World Bank study which sought to better understand the role of local institutions in supporting adaptation to climate variability and change in Ethiopia, Mali and Yemen. The study raised three questions. First, what strategies have been adopted by rural households in the past to adapt to climate variability? Second, to what extent do institutions of various sorts assist households in adopting adaptation strategies? And third, what are the factors that prevent households from adopting appropriate adaptation strategies? For the purposes of this paper, institutions are defined as structured, formal or informal organizations. The study followed a three-step approach. First, drawing on original data from field surveys, focus group discussions and institutional stakeholder interviews, household vulnerability to climate variability was characterized in terms of its three constituent elements: exposure to climate-related shocks and stresses, and sensitivity and adaptive capacity in the face of such stressors. Sensitivity refers to the degree to which people are affected by climate variability and change. High levels of exposure and sensitivity and low levels of adaptive capacity generally result in high levels of vulnerability. But a high level of exposure need not necessarily result in a high level of vulnerability if the household's adaptive capacity is also high.

Since 2005, a growing number of vulnerable communities and nations have used the human rights lexicon to argue their case for an urgent and ambitious response to climate change. The purpose of this Social Development Department Working paper is to examine the emergence of a new discourse linking climate change and human rights, and to assess its social and political implications, particularly as they relate to development practitioners. The scope of this paper is to explore what relevance this new discourse has on what David Kennedy calls the 'vocabularies, expertise, and sensibilities' of development practitioners (Kennedy 2005). The methodology for this paper involved interviews with academics and policy practitioners who have shaped this emerging discourse; a wide-ranging literature review of texts relevant to the fields of development, climate change and human rights; discussions with development professionals who have the daily responsibility of operationalizing approaches to reducing vulnerability and building resilience; and finally drawing upon the author's own experience leading the Maldives' government's initiative on the Human Dimensions of Climate Change and as a consultant within the Social Dimensions of Climate Change Cluster of the World Bank's Social Development Department. It is important to stress that this paper is not a legal piece. Human rights are as much about ethical demands, calls for social justice, public awareness, advocacy, and political action as they are concerned with legal norms and rules. Sen has pointed out a 'theory of human rights cannot be sensibly confined within the juridical model in which it is frequently incarcerated' (Sen 2004, 319). Consequently this piece will focus on the wider, political economy aspects of the interface between human rights and climate change. It is further appropriate to state that this is not an advocacy piece. The paper deliberately avoids being normative or prescriptive in recommending a human rights-based approach to developing climate change operations. It does examine why vulnerable populations chose to embrace this approach, why they continue to view it as a transformative strategy, and what some of the successes and challenges have been.

Weather is the term used to describe the atmospheric conditions (heat, wetness, wind, etc.) prevailing at any one place and time. Climate is the sum of the prevailing weather conditions of a given place over a period of time, typically summed over many decades. This paper seeks to provide strategic directions for mainstreaming support for climate change within the World Bank's broader program of assistance to Vietnam. It does so by reviewing the current understanding of climate change in Vietnam and likely impacts, outlining principles to guide the Bank's engagement in this field, and applying these principles across a range of sectors, taking into account both near- and longer-term considerations. The report identifies elements of the Bank's current and planned portfolio of projects and analytical work that are contributing or will contribute to improved knowledge, planning, and actions, and it points to additional areas where new or more work seems warranted. The report represents a first iteration of a strategy for supporting Vietnam in managing the challenges posed by climate change. As more experience is gathered and as our understanding of both the science and the economics of climate change impacts in Vietnam improves, this strategy will need to be revisited and refined. While the process of climate change is expected to be a long-term phenomenon-with predictions for considerable changes through the second half of the twenty-first century, the focus of this report is on decisions and priorities that should govern the Bank's assistance during this decade. Given an array of uncertainties, extending the developing assistance planning vision much beyond 2020 is not practical. This time frame also corresponds to the government of Vietnam's own planning horizon.

Cities face significant impacts from climate change, both now and into the future. These impacts have potentially serious consequences for human health, livelihoods, and assets, especially for the urban poor, informal settlements, and other vulnerable groups. Climate change impacts range from an increase in extreme weather events and flooding to hotter temperatures and public health concerns. Cities in low elevation coastal zones, for instance, face the combined threat of sea-level rise and storm surges. The specific impacts on each city will depend on the actual changes in climate experienced (for example, higher temperatures or increased rainfall), which will vary from place to place. Climate change will increase the frequency at which some natural hazards occur, especially extreme weather events, and introduce new incremental impacts that are less immediate. However, few climate impacts will be truly unfamiliar to cities. Cities have always lived with natural hazards, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, and flooding. In some situations, cities will experience an increase in the frequency of existing climate-related hazards, such as flooding. Climate change considerations can be integrated with disaster risk reduction (DRR) in cities. DRR efforts already familiar to many may be used as a platform from which to develop climate change adaptation plans. In practical terms, disaster risk reduction and climate adaptation can be integrated in many instances, although cities should also consider incremental or gradual changes in climate that affect government operations or community life in less immediate and visible ways than conventional disasters. Approaches to collecting information on climate change impacts in a city can range from highly technical and resource-intensive, to simple and inexpensive. Technically complex assessments are likely to require collaboration with external experts, if a city is not large or well-resourced with sufficient in-house capacity.

Uncertainty plays a key role in the economics of climate change, and the discussions surrounding its implications for climate policy are far from settled. We give an overview of the literature on uncertainty in integrated assessment models of climate change and identify some future research needs. In the paper, we pay particular attention to three different and complementary approaches that model uncertainty in association with integrated assessment models: the discrete uncertainty modeling, the most common way to incorporate uncertainty in complex climate-economy models: the real options analysis, a simplified way to identify and value flexibility: the continuous-time stochastic dynamic programming, which is computationally most challenging but necessary if persistent stochasticity is considered.

This report analyzes in some detail the risks to project finance and the performance of real-sector investments. Options, futures, derivatives, foreign exchange and more exotic instruments are not specifically addressed. The objectives of institutional investors, such as pension funds, include creation of sustained revenues over a long period of time. Clearly, given this long-term perspective, institutional investors need to be particularly aware of growing risks to their investments in climatically sensitive sectors or regions. This report demonstrates that climate change and its impacts are likely to alter a number of conditions that are material to the objectives of financial institutions. If changing conditions are not actively managed, investments and institutions may underperform. Most investments will be channeled through financial institutions. Given that the main effects of climate change are now well established, there is a considerable opportunity, as well as a responsibility, for these institutions to take a leading role in adaptation to climate change. Institutions managing investments in long-lived assets have both a direct financial risk to consider and the opportunity to create value by working proactively with their clients and other stakeholders to take steps to manage the risks. Going forward, International Finance Corporation (IFC) will initiate the development of more general tools addressing climate risks and investments.

There is no longer any serious debate about whether greenhouse gas emissions from human activity are altering the earth's climate. There is also a broad consensus that efficient mitigation of emissions will require carbon pricing via market based instruments (charges or auctioned tradable permits). The remaining controversies stem mostly from economic and technological forecasting uncertainties, disputes about global and intergenerational equity, and political divisions over collective measures to combat climate change. Near term closure seems unlikely on any of these fronts, but the science is now sufficiently compelling that a global consensus supports concerted action. Developing countries must be full participants, because they will be most heavily impacted by global warming, and because the scale of their emissions is rapidly approaching parity with developed countries.

Grim descriptions of the long-term consequences of climate change have given the impression that the climate impacts from greenhouse gases threaten long-term economic growth. However, the impact of climate change on the global economy is likely to be quite small over the next 50 years. Severe impacts even by the end of the century are unlikely. The greatest threat that climate change poses to long-term economic growth is from potentially excessive near-term mitigation efforts.

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e.., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions.

The 2005 Gleneagles G8 summit in July 2005 stimulated a concerted effort of the Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) to broaden and accelerate programs on access to energy and climate change mitigation and adaptation through the Clean Energy Investment Framework (CEIF). At the Gleneagles summit, it was agreed that a report on the implementation of the CEIF would be prepared for the 2008 G8 (Group of Eight: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) summit hosted by Japan. This joint report of the MDBs to the G8 summit in Hokkaido is intended to provide information on the outcomes and lessons learned under the CEIF, describe the collective MDB objectives for addressing the energy access and climate change challenges, and outline how the MDBs plan to build on the CEIF experience to date to more fully achieve these objectives. The report builds upon the 'the MDBs and the climate change agenda' report that was presented at the December 2007 Bali climate change conference. This report describes actions taken by each MDB to develop climate change strategies and programs of actions tailored to their particular client needs, based on resources and funding mechanisms currently available. Under the CEIF, the MDBs have strengthened collaboration on analytical work and programming and committed to expand this collaboration to optimize the impact of their collective actions. In addition to reporting on the status of the CEIF, this report outlines the collective ambition of the MDBs with respect to assisting the developing countries in meeting the climate change challenge, summarizes their evolving strategies designed to meet these objectives and the mechanisms through which they intend to achieve the necessary collaboration to optimize the collective impact of their climate change interventions.

Many countries are implementing or at least considering policies to counter increasingly certain negative impacts from climate change. An increasing amount of research has been devoted to the analysis of the costs of climate change and its mitigation, as well as to the design of policies, such as the international Kyoto Protocol, post-Kyoto negotiations, regional initiatives, and unilateral actions. Although most studies on climate change policies in economics have considered efficiency aspects, there is a growing literature on equity and justice. Climate change policy has important dimensions of distributive justice, both within and across generations, but in this paper we survey only studies on the intragenerational aspect, i.e.., within a generation. We cover several domains including the international, regional, national, sectoral and inter-personal, and examine aspects such as the distribution of burdens from climate change, climate change policy negotiations in general, implementation of climate agreements using tradable emission permits, and the uncertainty of alternatives to emission reductions.

This strategic framework serves to guide and support the operational response of the World Bank Group (WBG) to new development challenges posed by global climate change. Unabated, climate change threatens to reverse hard-earned development gains. The poorest countries and communities will suffer the earliest and the most. Yet they depend on actions by other nations, developed and developing. While climate change is an added cost and risk to development, a well-designed and implemented global climate policy can also bring new economic opportunities to developing countries. Climate change demands unprecedented global cooperation involving a concerted action by countries at different development stages supported by "measurable, reportable, and verifiable" transfer of finance and technology to developing countries. Trust of developing countries in equity and fairness of a global climate policy and neutrality of the supporting institutions is critical for such cooperation to succeed. Difficulties with mobilizing resources for achieving the millennium development goals and with agreeing on global agricultural trade underscore the political challenges. The framework will help the WBG maintain the effectiveness of its core mission of supporting growth and poverty reduction. While recognizing added costs and risks of climate change and an evolving global climate policy. The WBG top priority will be to build collaborative relations with developing country partners and provide them customized demand-driven support through its various instruments from financing to technical assistance to constructive advocacy. It will give considerable attention to strengthening resilience of economies and communities to increasing climate risks and adaptation. The operational focus will be on improving knowledge and capacity, including learning by doing. The framework will guide operational programs of WBG entities to support actions whose benefits to developing countries are robust under significant uncertainties about future climate policies and impacts-actions that have "no regrets."