The Economics of Climate Adaptation: An Assessment

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Josephson, Anna, Su, Rodrigo Guerra, Collins, Greg, Jacobs, Katharine
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2024
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author Josephson, Anna
Su, Rodrigo Guerra
Collins, Greg
Jacobs, Katharine
author_facet Josephson, Anna
Su, Rodrigo Guerra
Collins, Greg
Jacobs, Katharine
contents The cost of the impacts of climate change have already proven to be larger than previously believed. Understanding the costs and benefits of adapting to the changing climate is necessary to make targeted and appropriate investment decisions. In this paper, we use a narrative review to synthesize the current literature on the economic case for climate adaptation, with the objective of assessing the value (economic and otherwise) of climate change adaptation, as well as the strength of the methods and evidence that have been used to date. We find that skepticism is warranted about many of the estimates about costs and benefits of climate adaptation and their underlying assumptions, due to a range of complexities associated with (1) uncertainty in distinguishing the economic impacts of climate change from seasonal variability; (2) difficulties in non-market valuation; (3) lack of consistent data collection over time at multiple scales; and (4) distributional inequities in access to proactive adaptation and recovery funding. While useful for broad stroke advocacy purposes, these estimates fall short of the refinement and rigor needed to inform investment decision-making, particularly at micro and local scales. Most estimates rely on cost benefit analysis and do not effectively address these issues. An emergent and promising literature tackles alternative estimation strategies and attempts to address some of them, including the complexities of uncertainty and non-market valuation.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2411_16893
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle The Economics of Climate Adaptation: An Assessment
Josephson, Anna
Su, Rodrigo Guerra
Collins, Greg
Jacobs, Katharine
General Economics
Economics
The cost of the impacts of climate change have already proven to be larger than previously believed. Understanding the costs and benefits of adapting to the changing climate is necessary to make targeted and appropriate investment decisions. In this paper, we use a narrative review to synthesize the current literature on the economic case for climate adaptation, with the objective of assessing the value (economic and otherwise) of climate change adaptation, as well as the strength of the methods and evidence that have been used to date. We find that skepticism is warranted about many of the estimates about costs and benefits of climate adaptation and their underlying assumptions, due to a range of complexities associated with (1) uncertainty in distinguishing the economic impacts of climate change from seasonal variability; (2) difficulties in non-market valuation; (3) lack of consistent data collection over time at multiple scales; and (4) distributional inequities in access to proactive adaptation and recovery funding. While useful for broad stroke advocacy purposes, these estimates fall short of the refinement and rigor needed to inform investment decision-making, particularly at micro and local scales. Most estimates rely on cost benefit analysis and do not effectively address these issues. An emergent and promising literature tackles alternative estimation strategies and attempts to address some of them, including the complexities of uncertainty and non-market valuation.
title The Economics of Climate Adaptation: An Assessment
topic General Economics
Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.16893