Costs and benefits
- Alternative financing mechanism for climate adaptation
-
A new financing approach could disaggregate adaptive responses and measures by the type of goods and services they provide. Subsequently this should allow the identification of the various lines of financing required. For developing counties, the authors emphasise the need for adaptation to be incorporated into development strategies at all scales and additional funding to "top-up" current development aid is required.
Although some estimates of climate damages exist, costing impacts is controversial, complex and still in its infancy. However, it is assumed that the costs of adapting to climate change will rise with more warming and the increased frequency of extreme events. It is clear that vulnerable countries and communities with fewer resources and with the least capacity to cope will be disproprotionately affected by the impacts of climate change.
Limited work has been conducted on costs and benefits with a handful of studies projecting sectoral or cross-sectoral estimates of the cost of climate impacts with different climate change scenarios. This is further complicated by considering the benefits of various adaptation options, whether anticipatory or reactive, and the benefits brought by increased temperatures, such as longer growing seasons. Some commentators consider there is limited value in trying to cost climate adaptation as aggregation is impossible given the incommensurable nature of impacts across timescale, location and socio-economic categories.
For example, the complexity is magnified when considering that ancillary benefits may result from adaptation projects, which create added economic or social resilience. All these challenges cause difficulties for the way climate adaptation projects are financed and evaluated.
More on costs and benefits: the complete listings from Eldis
