A multi-level perspective on climate risks and drivers of entrepreneurial robustness – Findings from sectoral comparison in alpine Austria

Recent works on organizational adaptation to climate change have repeatedly stressed that – despite concerns about large-scale impacts of climate change on supply chain networks – studies on climate change adaptation in manufacturing industries are still surprisingly scarce. The following study develops a systemic analytical framework based on which climate risks for manufacturing industries are reviewed and drivers (defined as supportive factors) of entrepreneurial robustness are examined. The analysis builds upon a case study in the alpine Austrian state of Tyrol where an intense regional rise of average temperatures occurs, going along with increased risks of natural mountain hazards and exposed settlement structures. In this climate-sensitive setting the authors conducted a survey on risk perceptions among 102 managers from manufacturing firms. Based on a comparison of the sectors metal and engineering, timber products, and construction, the authors argue that drivers of entrepreneurial robustness can be subsumed under five major strategic principles: (a) the deployment of slack resources, (b) vertical supply chain integration, (c) manufacturing flexibility, (d) material efficiency, and (e) technological risk prevention. Departing from the empirical results, the authors argue that across these principles the development of drivers depends on an interplay of structural prerequisites and human decisions on the levels of the focal firm, the supply chain network, and the political, economic, and geographic environment. In this sense, the authors conceptualize different forms of contingencies – thus effects influencing the development of drivers – within an ontology which may support further system-oriented analysis of climate change adaptation in industry.     

气候变化对中国水资源影响的适应性评估与管理框架

 通过论述气候变化对中国水资源影响的适应性评估与管理框架,提出一个气候变化影响决策评估工具,它包括：未来气候变化对中国水资源潜在影响的定性描述分析、半定量与定量分析以及适应性对策评估。由于不同气候区域所面临的水资源问题不同,选择中国4个典型案例区域,并确定不同的目标进行气候变化适应性管理综合研究,提出了甄别气候变化影响和适应性管理的新的思路、框架与方法论。该项研究为应对未来气候变化影响的水资源规划与风险管理提供了途径与方法。     

气候变化对中国水资源影响的适应性评估与管理框架

通过论述气候变化对中国水资源影响的适应性评估与管理框架,提出一个气候变化影响决策评估工具,它包括：未来气候变化对中国水资源潜在影响的定性描述分析、半定量与定量分析以及适应性对策评估。由于不同气候区域所面临的水资源问题不同,选择中国4个典型案例区域,并确定不同的目标进行气候变化适应性管理综合研究,提出了甄别气候变化影响和适应性管理的新的思路、框架与方法论。该项研究为应对未来气候变化影响的水资源规划与风险管理提供了途径与方法。     

The impact of climate change on tribal communities in the US: displacement, relocation, and human rights

Tribal communities in the United States, particularly in coastal areas, are being forced to relocate due to accelerated rates of sea level rise, land erosion, and/or permafrost thaw brought on by climate change. Forced relocation and inadequate governance mechanisms and budgets to address climate change and support adaptation strategies may cause loss of community and culture, health impacts, and economic decline, further exacerbating tribal impoverishment and injustice. Sovereign tribal communities around the US, however, are using creative strategies to counter these losses. Taking a human rights approach, this article looks at communities’ advocacy efforts and strategies in dealing with climate change, displacement, and relocation. Case studies of Coastal Alaska and Louisiana are included to consider how communities are shaping their own relocation efforts in line with their cultural practices and values. The article concludes with recommendations on steps for moving forward toward community-led and government-supported resettlement programs.     

A conceptual framework for cross-border impacts of climate change

Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies tend to confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region. However, this approach ignores cross-border climate change impacts that occur remotely from the location of their initial impact and that may severely disrupt societies and livelihoods. We propose a conceptual framework and accompanying nomenclature for describing and analysing such cross-border impacts. The conceptual framework distinguishes an initial impact that is caused by a climate trigger within a specific region. Downstream consequences of that impact propagate through an impact transmission system while adaptation responses to deal with the impact propagate through a response transmission system. A key to understanding cross-border impacts and responses is a recognition of different types of climate triggers, categories of cross-border impacts, the scales and dynamics of impact transmission, the targets and dynamics of responses and the socio-economic and environmental context that also encompasses factors and processes unrelated to climate change. These insights can then provide a basis for identifying relevant causal relationships. We apply the framework to the floods that affected industrial production in Thailand in 2011, and to projected Arctic sea ice decline, and demonstrate that the framework can usefully capture the complex system dynamics of cross-border climate impacts. It also provides a useful mechanism to identify and understand adaptation strategies and their potential consequences in the wider context of resilience planning. The cross-border dimensions of climate impacts could become increasingly important as climate changes intensify. We conclude that our framework will allow for these to be properly accounted for, help to identify new areas of empirical and model-based research and thereby support climate risk management.     

Managing the inconceivable: participatory assessments of impacts and responses to extreme climate change

A comprehensive understanding of the implications of extreme climate change requires an in-depth exploration of the perceptions and reactions of the affected stakeholder groups and the lay public. The project on “Atlantic sea level rise: Adaptation to imaginable worst-case climate change” (Atlantis) has studied one such case, the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and a subsequent 5–6 m sea-level rise. Possible methods are presented for assessing the societal consequences of impacts and adaptation options in selected European regions by involving representatives of pertinent stakeholders. Results of a comprehensive review of participatory integrated assessment methods with a view to their applicability in climate impact studies are summarized including Simulation-Gaming techniques, the Policy Exercise method, and the Focus Group technique. Succinct presentations of these three methods are provided together with short summaries of relevant earlier applications to gain insights into the possible design options. Building on these insights, four basic versions of design procedures suitable for use in the Atlantis project are presented. They draw on design elements of several methods and combine them to fit the characteristics and fulfill the needs of addressing the problem of extreme sea-level rise. The selected participatory techniques and the procedure designs might well be useful in other studies assessing climate change impacts and exploring adaptation options.     

Organizational Structure and the Behavior of Firms: Implications for Integrated Assessment

Existing climate/economy models typically treatproduction through the assumptions that firms maximizeprofits and that inputs are transformed to outputsaccording to a neoclassical production function. Yetthese assumptions are at variance with some of theknown empirical features of business behavior. One ofthe most promising ways to model firms morerealistically is to include organizational networkstructure as an integral part of the representation. The firm's optimization problem then includes not onlythe choice of inputs and outputs, but the choice of anorganizational structure as well. This approach makesit possible to examine in a unified framework a numberof issues pertaining to the internal workings of thefirm: the consequences of multiple organizationalobjectives, the possible existence of productivityspillovers from one activity to another, and thealgorithmic characteristics of procedural routines. Understanding how organizational structures influenceoverall performance is an important step towardsbetter representing firms in integrated assessmentmodels. Our results show that phenomena of the typecharacterizing the `Porter hypothesis' (improvedenvironmental performance without reduction inproductivity or profitability) can appear even in verysimple models of the firm, provided the effects oforganizational structure are taken into account.     

Synergies and trade-offs between adaptation,mitigation and development

To succeed in meeting carbon emissions reduction targets to limit projected climate change impacts, it is imperative that improved synergies be developed between mitigation and adaptation strategies. This is especially important in development policy among remote indigenous communities, where demands for development have often not been accompanied by commensurate efforts to respond to future climate change impacts. Here we explore how mitigation and adaptation pathways can be combined to transform rural indigenous communities toward sustainability. Case studies from communities in Alaska and Nepal are introduced to illustrate current and potential synergies and trade-offs and how these might be harnessed to maximize beneficial outcomes. The adaptation pathways approach and a framework for transformational adaptation are proposed to unpack these issues and develop understanding of how positive transformational change can be supported.     

Assessing climate change impacts,sea level rise and storm surge risk in port cities: a case study on Copenhagen

This study illustrates a methodology to assess the economic impacts of climate change at a city scale and benefits of adaptation, taking the case of sea level rise and storm surge risk in the city of Copenhagen, capital of Denmark. The approach is a simplified catastrophe risk assessment, to calculate the direct costs of storm surges under scenarios of sea level rise, coupled to an economic input–output (IO) model. The output is a risk assessment of the direct and indirect economic impacts of storm surge under climate change, including, for example, production and job losses and reconstruction duration, and the benefits of investment in upgraded sea defences. The simplified catastrophe risk assessment entails a statistical analysis of storm surge characteristics, geographical-information analysis of population and asset exposure combined with aggregated vulnerability information. For the city of Copenhagen, it is found that in absence of adaptation, sea level rise would significantly increase flood risks. Results call for the introduction of adaptation in long-term urban planning, as one part of a comprehensive strategy to manage the implications of climate change in the city. Mitigation policies can also aid adaptation by limiting the pace of future sea level rise.     

Addressing human vulnerability to climate change: Toward a ‘no-regrets’ approach

This paper presents and applies a conceptual framework to address human vulnerability to climate change. Drawing upon social risk management and asset-based approaches, the conceptual framework provides a unifying lens to examine links between risks, adaptation, and vulnerability. The result is an integrated approach to increase the capacity of society to manage climate risks with a view to reduce the vulnerability of households and maintain or increase the opportunities for sustainable development. We identify ‘no-regrets’ adaptation interventions, meaning actions that generate net social benefits under all future scenarios of climate change and impacts. We also make the case for greater support for community-based adaptation and social protection and propose a research agenda.     

IPCC第五次评估报告对气候变化风险及风险管理的新认知

IPCC第五次评估报告第二工作组报告在气候变化风险及风险管理方面聚焦于气候变化对领域和区域的不利影响。在综合分析与气候变化相关危害、暴露度和脆弱性的基础上,提出了气候变化风险的评估框架。风险不仅来自气候变化本身,同时也来自人类社会发展和治理过程。报告首次提出了新生风险,归纳总结了气候变化带来的关键风险,评估了不同温升下气候变化5个“关注理由”的风险水平。在风险管理过程中,由于适应和减缓的局限性,剩余风险是不可避免的。未来,若全球平均温度升高4℃（较工业革命以前）将加剧人类和社会生态系统广泛的、严重的和不可逆影响的风险。     

Place-based or sector-based adaptation? A case study of municipal and fishery policy integration

Place-based adaptation planning is an approach to address cross-sectoral and multi-level governance concerns as well as to build local adaptive capacity in vulnerable resource-dependent communities facing the adverse impacts of climate change. In contrast, sector-based adaptation planning focuses on addressing climate change impacts on individual economic sectors (e.g. fisheries or forestry) or sub-sectors (such as lobsters or timber). Yet, linking sectoral approaches with local adaptation policies is challenging. More effort is needed to identify opportunities for complementary adaptation strategies and policy integration to foster multiple benefits. In this article, we use a case study of fishery sector resources and municipal adaptation planning in Nova Scotia to demonstrate how meaningful entry points could catalyse policy integration and lead to co-benefits across multiple levels and stakeholder groups. Drawing on a fisheries systems and fish chain framework, we identify and assess several entry points for policy integration across sector- and place-based adaptation domains within coastal habitats, as well as harvesting, processing, and marketing sectors. The analysis highlights the multiple benefits of integrating local municipal adaptation plans with multi-scale resource sectors especially towards monitoring ecosystem changes, protecting essential infrastructure, and securing local livelihoods.

POLICY RELEVANCE

Climate change is having a growing impact on coastal communities around the world, with consequences for sea-level rise, critical habitats, essential infrastructure, and multiple economic sectors and industries. This Canadian case study demonstrates how municipal adaptation initiatives can be complementary to sector-based adaptation at both local and regional levels through various entry points across commodity production chains. Policy integration across place-based and sector-based adaptation processes should lead to multiple benefits such as conserving marine biodiversity, protecting essential infrastructure, and securing livelihoods. Our analysis, which focuses specifically on the fishery sector and coastal communities, shows that these co-benefits may arise particularly in such coastal-marine systems and provide policy lessons to terrestrial systems and other sectors.     

The complex decision-making of climate-induced relocation: adaptation and loss and damage

Climate change is increasingly challenging the ability of millions of people to sustain livelihoods as the places where they live become uninhabitable. The relocation of populations as individuals, households, and communities within countries and across international borders demonstrates the complexity of climate change impacts. Looking at the literature, some researchers argue that relocation caused by climate change can be an effective strategy to adapt to localized changes, whereas others argue that the movement away from ones' homeland is more neatly captured in the climate change lexicon as ‘loss and damage’. We argue here that the relocation of people as a result of the impacts of climate change can be both adaptation and loss and damage. Drawing on examples from Alaska and Kiribati, we show that dividing this issue between the two concepts is unhelpful in resolving key issues around the types of appropriate support for these transitions to sustain and protect livelihoods and to open up possibilities for self-determined futures.

Policy Relevance

Climate-induced relocation poses a significant challenge for the populations affected as well as the government agencies tasked with providing technical assistance and funding. At present, policies and institutional frameworks have not yet been developed to accommodate these challenges, despite the urgent need to do so. When the relocation of populations can be planned, participatory, and people centred, then it can be an adaptation strategy that will protect people from the permanent loss of land and livelihoods. If these movements are decided, driven, managed, and undertaken by those affected, then there is the potential for the relocation to also be a transformative opportunity for people to respond to the impacts of climate change, and sustain their livelihoods and possibly even improve certain livelihood outcomes. However, these relocations also cause significant loss and damage. The extent of the loss and damage will partly depend on the ability to have these relocations planned and ensure that human rights protections are embedded in institutional frameworks. The article shares a series of lessons and learnings that are of policy relevance at a variety of scales.     

The long history of environmental migration: Assessing vulnerability construction and obstacles to successful relocation in Shishmaref,Alaska

Migration decisions are complex and are linked to multiple vulnerabilities, including changing ecological conditions precipitated by climate change. As ecological thresholds are met, community-wide migrations will become more common. These community-wide migrations are more likely to occur to already vulnerable populations, and may levy high social costs. In order to prevent the negative outcomes associated with forced migration and diaspora, policy intervention is likely. Our research examines the case study of Shishmaref, Alaska, where relocation as an adaptation strategy to changing ecological conditions is the only sustainable option. We find that the colonial history in Shishmaref is explicitly linked to contemporary exposure to hazards and increased vulnerability. We further assess obstacles to a State sponsored relocation. These obstacles include disaster response protocol that does not adequately accommodate climate change scenarios. Relocation planning is further complicated by feelings of mis- and under-representation of local voices in political arenas. This case demonstrates the interrelatedness between historically constructed vulnerability and obstacles to adaptation planning. We also offer unique insight into the details of relocation planning as an adaptation strategy among one of the first community-wide migrations associated with climate change.     

Regional impact assessment of flooding under future climate and socio-economic scenarios for East Anglia and North West England

Interactive tools developed within the RegIS project for assessing the impacts of flooding provide information to support flood management policies and analyse the performance of possible adaptation activities to climate change. This paper describes the methodologies used in the development of these tools including tidal and fluvial flooding processes with different levels of climate pressures, represented by changes in sea level and peak river flows. Potential impacts of climate change for East Anglia and North West England are explored to the 2050s using four socio-economic scenarios to represent plausible futures. This includes changes in urban land use as well as adaptive responses to flooding comprising dike upgrade and realignment options. The results indicate that future climate will increase flood risk in both regions. East Anglia is more vulnerable to climate change than North West England at the present level of protection, especially in the extensive coastal lowlands of the Fens and Broads because of the combined effects of sea-level rise and increased fluvial flows. Although the present adaptive policy of upgrading defences in East Anglia will reduce the impacts of flooding, this policy is not effective in the case of the more extreme climate change scenarios by 2050s. In this case, more extensive adaptation would be required.     

An economic analysis of potential impacts of climate change in Egypt

Projections of climate impacts on crop yields simulated for different General Circulation Model (GCM) scenarios are used, in a recursively dynamic general equilibrium framework, to account for potential economy-wide impacts of climate change in Egypt. Comparing these impact projections to those obtained under a reference, business-as-usual, scenario assuming some moderate changes in the political, economic or technological spheres, indicates that global warming has potentially negative effects. The analysis is based on a global assessment of potential climate change-induced variations in world commodity production and trade. The Egyptian agricultural sector, and the non-agricultural sector to a lesser extent, are projected to be increasingly less self-sufficient. Specific potential adverse impacts are identified. The simulation results show that high-cost adaptation measures involving major changes in the agricultural system and practices may mitigate these adverse impacts. Stimulating economic development of the rural areas and creating appropriate conditions for effective diffusion and development of technologies — particularly for the agricultural sector — would seem a desirable strategy. Perhaps, more importantly, the simulation results show that the assumption of exogenously determined technological progress may be inappropriate, in which case the potential adverse impacts of a future warming of the global climate are likely to be fewer than is indicated in this study — if prevailing constraints on productivity growth in the major food and feed grains are ‘released’ by endogenous advances in technology.     

Learning to Adapt: Organisational Adaptation to Climate Change Impacts

Analysis of human adaptation to climate change should be based on realistic models of adaptive behaviour at the level of organisations and individuals. The paper sets out a framework for analysing adaptation to the direct and indirect impacts of climate change in business organisations with new evidence presented from empirical research into adaptation in nine case-study companies. It argues that adaptation to climate change has many similarities with processes of organisational learning. The paper suggests that business organisations face a number of obstacles in learning how to adapt to climate change impacts, especially in relation to the weakness and ambiguity of signals about climate change and the uncertainty about benefits flowing from adaptation measures. Organisations rarely adapt ‘autonomously’, since their adaptive behaviour is influenced by policy and market conditions, and draws on resources external to the organisation. The paper identifies four adaptation strategies that pattern organisational adaptive behaviour.     

Identifying thresholds and barriers to adaptation through measuring climate sensitivity and capacity to change in an Australian primary industry

Primary producers, including graziers, crop farmers and commercial fishers are especially vulnerable to climate change because they depend on highly climate-sensitive natural resources. Adaptation to climate change will make a major difference to the severity of the impacts experienced. However, individuals (resource users) can erect sometimes seemingly peculiar barriers to potential adaptation options that need to be addressed if adaptation is to be effective. Our aim was to understand the nature of barriers to change for cattle graziers in the northern Australian rangelands. We conceptualised barriers as adverse reactions where resource users are unlikely to contemplate adaptations that threaten core values or perceptions about themselves. We assumed that resource users that were more sensitive to climate change impacts—or more dependent on the resource—were more proximate to thresholds of coping and thus more likely to erect barriers, especially people with little adaptive capacity. Given that climate sensitivity and adaptive capacity are important components of vulnerability, our approach was to conduct a vulnerability assessment to identify potential but important barriers to change. Data from 240 graziers suggest that graziers in northern Australia might be especially vulnerable to climate change because their identity, place attachment, low employability, weak networks and dependents can make them sensitive to change, and their sensitivity can be compounded by a low adaptive capacity. We argue that greater attention needs to be placed on the social context of climate change impacts and on the processes shaping vulnerability and adaptation, especially at the scale of the individual.     

Climate change and adaptation: an integrated framework linking social and physical aspects in poorly-gauged regions

Various frameworks related to climate change and adaptations that have been developed to date have notable benefits as well as significant limitations. It is not always practical to implement advanced climate change frameworks in situations with limited data availability. Social aspects, such as people’s experience and perception, are often under-prioritized. Therefore, this study introduces an integrated framework linking social and physical aspects of climate change to assess its impacts on water resources and to evaluate differing adaptation options in poorly gauged basins. A case study of the Kali Gandaki River Basin (KGRB) in western Nepal is presented to demonstrate the applicability of this framework. Results of the study show that people of the mountainous Mustang district in the KGRB have perceived climate change or climate variability, its impacts on water resources, as well as other water-related issues and potential adaptations or responses. Furthermore, evaluation of people’s perception using available physical data confirms the increase in temperature and average annual discharge in the Kali Gandaki River as well as poor water use, as a major problem at all levels in the basin. Despite increasing water availability, a concurrent increase in water use is difficult due to topographic constraints on irrigation development. However, the impacts of climate change are particularly severe in Mustang, owing to the fact that a large proportion of the population depends on a climate-sensitive livelihood like agriculture. Therefore, various adaptation options are identified in the agricultural sector, and one relevant option is further evaluated. The framework developed in this study has the potential to be further applied to other poorly gauged basins.     

Personalized risk messaging can reduce climate concerns

One potential barrier to climate policy action is that individuals view climate change as a problem for people in other parts of the world or for future generations. As some scholars argue, risk messaging strategies that make climate change personally relevant may help overcome this barrier. In this article, we report a large-n survey experiment on San Francisco Bay Area residents to investigate how providing spatially-resolved risk information to individuals shapes their climate risk perceptions in the context of sea-level rise. Our results suggest that personalized risk messaging can sometimes reduce concern about sea-level rise. These experimental effects are limited to respondents who believe that climate change is happening. Further, we do not find an effect of providing local risk messages on an individual's willingness to pay for regional climate adaptation measures. Our results emphasize that local messaging strategies around sea-level rise risks may not have the clear impacts that some advocates and scholars presume.