Climate change 2014 - Synthesis Report

The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change: ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

This paper describes the scenario matrix architecture that underlies a framework for developing new scenarios for climate change research. The matrix architecture facilitates addressing key questions related to current climate research and policy-making: identifying the effectiveness of different adaptation and mitigation strategies (in terms of their costs, risks, and other consequences) and the possible trade-offs and synergies. The two main axes of the matrix are: (1) the level of radiative forcing of the climate system (as characterized by the representative concentration pathways), and (2) a set of alternative plausible trajectories of future global development (described as shared socio-economic pathways). The matrix can be used to guide scenario development at different scales. It can also be used as a heuristic tool for classifying new and existing scenarios for assessment. Key elements of the architecture, in particular the shared socio-economic pathways and shared policy assumptions (devices for incorporating explicit mitigation and adaptation policies), are elaborated in other papers in this special issue.

A new scenario framework for climate change research : scenario matrix architecture

The 2019 report of The Lancet Countdown on health and climate change : ensuring that the health of a child born today is not defined by a changing climate

The 2019 Report of The Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change

In accordance with decision 9/2 of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Committee of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (INC/FCCC) and endorsed by the Conference of the Parties in its decision 3/CP.1 (FCCC/CP/1995/7/Add.1), the secretariat is to make available, in the official languages of the United Nations, the executive summaries of the national communications submitted by Annex I Parties.

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models are a standard tool for policy analysis and forecasts of economic growth. Unfortunately, due to computational constraints, many CGE models are dimensionally small, aggregating countries into an often limited set of regions or using assumptions such as static price-level expectations, where next period’s price is conditional only on current or past prices. This is a concern for climate change modeling, since the effects of global warming by country, in a fully disaggregated and global trade model, are needed, and the known future effects of global warming should be included in forward-looking forecasts for prices and profitability. This work extends a large dimensional intertemporal CGE trade model to account for the various effects of global warming (e.g., loss in agricultural productivity, sea level rise, and health effects) on Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth and levels for 139 countries, by decade and over the long term, where producers look forward and adjust price expectations and capital stocks to account for future climate effects. The potential economic gains from complying with the Paris Accord are also estimated, showing that even with a limited set of possible damages from global warming, these gains are substantial. For example, with the comparative case of Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (4∘C), the global gains from complying with the 2∘C target (Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) are approximately US$17,489 billion per year in the long run (year 2100). The relative damages from not complying to Sub-Sahara Africa, India, and Southeast Asia, across all temperature ranges, are especially severe.

https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1029/2018EF000922

The Effects of Climate Change on GDP by Country and the Global Economic Gains From Complying With the Paris Climate Accord

This paper presents a practical model for optimally allocating a budget across different biosecurity threats and measures (e.g. prevention or border quarantine, active surveillance for early detection, and containment and eradication measures) to ensure the highest rate of return. Our portfolio model differs from the common principle, which ranks alternative projects by their benefit cost ratios and picks the one that generates the highest average benefit cost ratio. The model we propose, instead, aims to allocate shares of the budget to the species where it is most cost-effective, and consequently determine the optimal scale of the control program for each threat under varying budget constraints. The cost-effectiveness of each block of budget spent on a threat is determined by minimising its expected total cost, including the damages it inflicts, and the control expenditures incurred in preventing or mitigating damages. As an illustration, the model is applied to the optimal allocation of a budget across four of Australia's most dangerous pests and diseases: red imported fire ants; foot-and-mouth disease; papaya fruit fly; and orange hawkweed. The model can readily be extended to consider more species and activities, and more complex settings including cases where detailed spatial and temporal information needs to be considered.

/pdf/budgeting-and-portfolio-allocation-for-biosecurity-measures-zk0vwmpuxw.pdf

Van Ha Pham

Papers

The Effects of Climate Change on GDP by Country and the Global Economic Gains From Complying With the Paris Climate Accord

Budgeting and portfolio allocation for biosecurity measures

The Effects of Rice Export Policy on Regional Income, Prices and the Poor