On the State of Assessing the Risks and Opportunities of Climate Change in Europe and the Added Value of COIN

Abstract

This paper provides an overview on how climate change impact assessment is conducted in some EU countries, strengths and weaknesses of the current approaches, and the added values of the Austrian study (COIN). It focuses on bottom-up approaches for the assessment of climate risks and opportunities (CRA) as well as costs and benefits (CBA) of climate change. Main findings are: Despite different decision making contexts all methodologies acknowledge the inevitability of “unquantifiable impacts”. Uncertainties are pervasive but confidence rankings are not universally applied. Risk scorings and CBA coexist in almost all countries but are differently established in adaptation planning. An important gap in many methodologies of bottom-up is the assessment of cross-sectoral, indirect and macroeconomic effects. The COIN project advances CBA methods in several respects: It carefully defines concepts and impact chains, applies consistent socio-economic scenarios and shared policy assumptions across sectors. It covers cross-sectoral, indirect and macroeconomic effects. And it combines observations and projections, which can be more easily communicated in national dialogues than top down models. A logical next step is parallel national CRA effort—much in similarity to other European countries.