—
Uncertainty about how much the climate is changing is not a reason to delay
preparing for the harmful impacts of climate change says Professor Jim Hall of the
Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford and colleagues at
the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, writing in Nature Climate
Change.
The
costs of adapting to climate change, sea-level and flooding include the upfront
expenses of upgrading infrastructure, installing early-warning systems, and
effective organisations, as well as the costs of reducing risk, such as not
building on flood plains.
Robert
Nicholls, Professor of Coastal Engineering at the University of Southampton and
the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, says: "Some impacts of
climate change are now inevitable, so it is widely agreed that we must adapt.
But selecting and funding adaptation remains a challenge."
Professor
Nicholls and his co-authors describe two ways of assessing how much adaptation
to climate change is enough by balancing the risk of climate change against the
cost of adaptation. First they describe cost-benefit analysis where the cost of
the adaptation has to be less than the benefit of risk reduction.
Alternatively, decision makers can seek the most cost-effective way of
maintaining a tolerable level of risk. This approach is easier for policymakers
to understand, but thresholds of tolerable risk from climate change are not
well defined.
The Thames
Estuary Gateway is the only place in the UK where a level of protection against
flooding is defined in law -- a 1 in 1000 year standard of protection which
needs to be maintained with rising sea levels. The authors conclude that
adaptation decisions need exploration across a variety of different
interpretations of risk, not a single answer.
"Like
all complex problems several perspectives are needed and any single answer
would misrepresent the uncertainty, but let us not let paralysis by analysis be
an obstacle to action on adaptation," says Professor Hall.
"Adaptation
decisions have further benefits. The tenfold increase in the Netherlands
standard of flood protection proposed in 2008 has sent a message to global
business that the Netherlands will be open in the future, come what may,"
adds Professor Nicholls.
For further information
visit: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121127094109.htm
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