Responding to Sea Level Rise

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The scale of the SLR challenge is immense and strong mitigation efforts are needed to avoid multiple meters of SLR within the next few centuries, which will be unmanageable for many coastal regions of the world. But even with such efforts, sea levels will continue to rise for decades and centuries to come. Thus coastal adaptation is essential in any future, but it will be much easier and more likely to be successful when combined with stringent mitigation. The important thing is to start exploring long-term adaptive strategies now if they are not already initiated.

The online version of the paper “Responding to Sea Level Rise” is accessible here

Hinkel J., Nicholls R., Responding to Sea Level Rise. Spring Bridge Issue and Climate Change. 2020, Volume 50, Issue 1

New GCF Working Paper (01/20): ABOUT THE EUROPEAN GREEN DEAL

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Acess the full Working Paper on the European Green Deal here

With the personnel change at the top of both the European Commission and the European Central Bank, a Green Deal for Europe has been put on the agenda. To be politically feasible and socially acceptable, the European Green Deal needs to reduce not only emissions but also unemployment { especially youth unemployment { and regional as well as social inequality throughout Europe. This is possible if the Green Deal shifts the EU economy to a new development path. To provide an example showing feasibility, our paper presents a structure for the Green Deal based on large scale additional investments, in the order of 1% of GDP annually. It outlines how these can be funded, and estimates eff ects in terms of reaching the goals. An essential point is that the resources must be used in such a way as to trigger a renewal of the European innovation system; while being a challenge, the European Green Deal can thus also become an opportunity – and may be the only opportunity – to reach a carbon neutral European economy by 2050 and to revert the trend of decreasing social cohesion in Europe much earlier.

Acess the full Working Paper on the European Green Deal here

The added value of real options analysis for climate change adaptation

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Climate change adaptation investment decisions can be made more efficiently if uncertainty and new information are considered in their economic appraisal. Real options analysis (ROA) is a robust decision-making tool that allows for the incorporation of both uncertainty and new information. In this opinion article, we argue that ROA is a valuable tool, providing the analysis is designed to reflect the real-world characteristics of the decision context. We highlight the differences between traditional risk-based ROA, and scenario-based ROA, and discuss the relative merits of the approaches from the perspective of their assumptions and use of climate information.

The online version of the paper “The added value of real options analysis for climate change adaptation” is accessible here

Wreford, A, Dittrich, R, van der Pol, TD. The added value of real options analysis for climate change adaptation. WIREs Clim Change. 2020; 11:e642. https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.642