Climate change threatens to cause trillions in damage to world’s coasts, if coastal regions do not adapt to sea-level rise.

Coastal regions may face massive increases in damages from storm surge flooding over the course of the 21st century. According to a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, global average storm surge damages could increase from about 10-40 billion USD per year today to up to 100,000 billion USD per year by the end of century, if no adaptation action is taken. The study lead by the Berlin-based think-tank Global Climate Forum (GCF) presents, for the first time, comprehensive global simulation results on future storm surge damages to buildings and infrastructure. Drastic increases in these damages are expected, on one hand, due to rising sea-levels and, on the other hand, due to population and economic growth. Asia and Africa may be particularly hard hit because of their rapidly growing coastal mega-cities, such as Shanghai, Manila or Lagos. Read more

Blog on Global Systems Science online

Our blog on Global Systems Science is online.

Current Topics:

  • Towards a Global Systems Science of Urbanisation
  • Energy transition, climate change, and financial crisis: zooming in and zooming out

Out now: COMPLEXITY ECONOMICS – Complexity, Choices & Crises

The aim of this new journal is to enhance the knowledge and the know-how required for responsible action in the global economy of the 21st century. The global economy is likely to induce and experience transformations that we currently can hardly imagine. It will be characterized by complex networks combining local, national and global linkages, and by surprising interactions between the economy and its political, social and biophysical environments. In view of these new possibilities, the journal wants to preserve the insights developed since the days of Adam Smith in modes of analysis based on the conceptual device of representative agents. It will emphasize the opportunities provided by newer approaches to dynamic social networks, where actions are attributed to heterogeneous agents ranging from physical persons to multinational organizations, and where rationality has more aspects than the classical logical coherence. In view of this perspective, multi-agent modeling of complex economic networks will be an important focus of the journal. Read more

ECF-TG set up research lines on sustainable transport for Bergen at the European Mobility Week 2010

September 16-22, 2010
Bergen, Norway

The ECF-Transport Group met with occasion of the European Mobility Week 2010 in Bergen. The goal of the meeting was to set up a work plan to go ahead with the transport strategy agreed last June at the Bybanen Conference. The ECF-TG met at the City Council representatives of the Bergen mobility sector, among other groups of interest.

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Bybanen Konferanse (Norway)

European Climate Forum-Transport Group
June 21-22, 2010
Bergen, Norway

Bergen’s Bybanen works!

Bergen’s first light rail system was inaugurated on June 22nd by Queen Sonja of Norway, following a two-day conference with over 80 representatives from the private and public sector. The ECF-Transport Group, represented by the environmental researcher Aida Abdulah, talked about the challenges of sustainable mobility for Bergen and introduced the ECF-TG new project on stakeholder dialogs on transport.
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Making Climate Change win-win

Reactions on the ECF Annual Conference 2010

The Volterra Approach

 

Author: Bridget Rosewell

This is the theme of the conference of the European Climate Forum www.european-climate-forum.net this year. Listening to the speeches I am struck by the parallels in analysis between thinking about the impact of climate change and that of infrastructure. Read more

Release of Lagom generiC 2.0: an agent-based model of growing economies

Lagom generic is an agent based model for representing economic systems – the economy of Germany, the Mediterranean Region, the world – over a time horizon of one to several decades. The ECF Working Paper 1/2009 is based on the model. The improved version 2.0, can be downloaded now here.

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Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2009 for Klaus Hasselmann

Klaus Hasselmann, co-founder of the European Climate Forum and Emeritus Director of the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology is awarded the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Knowledge Award 2009 in the category of climate change. The recognition comprises 400.000 EUR and is based on his ground-breaking contributions to the scientific and public understanding of climate change by developing methods that established that recent global warming trends are primarily attributable to human activities. Read more

Joint report: From the Financial Crisis to Sustainability

Press conference
Berlin, October 26, 2009; 11 a.m.

Haus der Bundespressekonferenz
Schiffbauerdamm 40 / corner Reinhardtstraße 55
10117 Berlin

The report “From the Financial Crisis to Sustainability” documents an approach to climate policy based on macro-economic opportunities in GermanyFull employment models of the neoclassical brand suggest that climate policy is faced with a trade-off between future benefits and present costs. However, the situation of Germany after the global financial crisis cannot be grasped by such models, as its situation is characterized by both unemployment and underinvestment. More advanced models can be used to identify opportunities for win-win situations in climate policy. A new report on behalf of the German ministry of the environment spells out these opportunities and describes in detail a strategy to reallize them. Read more