Adaptive Management (Iterative Risk Management)

The risk of losses of income and productive means due to adverse weather can differ significantly among farmers sharing a productive landscape, and is of course hard to estimate, or even “guesstimate” empirically. Moreover, the costs associated with investments in reduced vulnerability to climatic events are likely to exhibit economies of scope. We explore the implications of these characteristics on farmer's decisions to adapt to climate change using a framed field experiment applied to coffee farmers in Costa Rica.

At its core, the report presents an eight-stage decision- making framework. Given the broad audience and diversity of applications, the framework and supporting guidance are inevitably rather generic. There are questions for the decision-maker to apply at each stage, and tools that may help. Guidance is provided for any decision that is likely to be influenced by climate, and decisions being made specifically in response to climate.

The MEDIATION project guides researchers, policy advisors and experts to suitable climate change adaptation methods and tools for a wide range of questions and from various disciplines and perspectives. The project involves 11 partners and 11 case studies. Summaries of five of these case studies can be found in the present publication. Further information on the MEDIATION methodology, Adaptation Platform and training materials, which were developed for experts with basic technical or scientific knowledge rather than the general public,

This book deals with the difficulties that face the economics of adaptation. Critical issues include: uncertainty; baselines; reversibility, flexibility and adaptive management; distributional impacts; discount rates and time horizons; mixing monetary and non-monetary evaluations and limits to the use of cost-benefit analysis; economy-wide impacts and cross-sectoral linkages. All of these are addressed in the book from the perspective of economics of adaptation.

Our main thesis in this article will be to offer a new classification of risk types and management strategies that promises scientific accuracy, a reflection of social diversity, and political feasibility. The proposal we describe in this article certainly needs adjustment to the political and regulatory culture in which it will be used, but it might offer some elementary building blocks for a variety of culturally adapted pathways to risk evaluation and management. This article explains our approach to risk evaluation, classification and management.

Risk assessment provides an opportunity to manage dam safety using a framework of risk evaluation that is used for other types of hazardous facilities and technologies. This paper contains a presentation of risk evaluation from a broad perspective but with application to dam safety. The distinction between tolerable and acceptable risk and the difference between risk evaluation under Common Law and Napoleonic Civil Code legal systems is addressed.

The following document is a result of the INTERREG IIIB project “ASTRA – Developing Policies and Adaptation Strategies to Climate Change in the Baltic Sea Region” that has been co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the INTERREG IIIB Baltic Sea Programme. The present document sums up the main findings of the ASTRA project. The document integrates the different outputs of the ASTRA project and presents information and recommendations for policymakers and interested stakeholders on adaptation strategies against climate change impacts.

Ongoing research since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 assessment report underscores the urgent need for rapid progress on national and global adaptation efforts.

The study aims to develop a global estimate of adaptation costs for informing the international community’s efforts in the climate negotiations

The EACC study addresses many of the shortcomings found in the adaptation cost literature