Thomas Schinko

Identifying the policy space for climate loss and damage

Climate risk analysis must play a fundamental role Currently planned greenhouse gas mitigation efforts would not prevent climate warming from going beyond 2°C as aspired to in the 2015 Paris Agreement (1), adding to climate-related impacts already under way (2). Although climate adaptation has been strengthened in the Paris Agreement, climate-related risks may exceed adaptation possibilities of communities and countries. To this effect, an important decision in the Paris Agreement was the endorsement of the Warsaw International Mechanism (WIM) for Loss and Damage (L&D) (3). This established L&D as a distinct pillar of climate negotiations, yet with an unclearly defined remit. With a policy framework yet to emerge, the 22nd Conference of the Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) in November in Marrakesh will review the structure, mandate, and effectiveness of the WIM, first institutionalized in 2013. Risk science can provide a rationale and delineate a policy space for L&D, composed of curative measures for unavoided and unavoidable impacts, and transformative measures for avoiding and managing increasingly intolerable risks.

A methodological framework to operationalize climate risk management: managing sovereign climate-related extreme event risk in Austria

Despite considerable uncertainties regarding the exact contribution of anthropogenic climate change to disaster risk, rising losses from extreme events have highlighted the need to comprehensively address climate-related risk. This requires linking climate adaptation to disaster risk management (DRM), leading to what has been broadly referred to as climate risk management (CRM). While this concept has received attention in debate, important gaps remain in terms of operationalizing it with applicable methods and tools for specific risks and decision-contexts. By developing and applying a methodological approach to CRM in the decision context of sovereign risk (flooding) in Austria we test the usefulness of CRM, and based on these insights, inform applications in other decision contexts. Our methodological approach builds on multiple lines of evidence and methods. These comprise of a broad stakeholder engagement process, empirical analysis of public budgets, and risk-focused economic modelling. We find that a CRM framework is able to inform instrumental as well as reflexive and participatory debate in practice. Due to the complex interaction of social–ecological systems with climate risks, and taking into account the likelihood of future contingent climate-related fiscal liabilities increasing substantially as a result of socioeconomic developments and climate change, we identify the need for advanced learning processes and iterative updates of CRM management plans. We suggest that strategies comprising a portfolio of policy measures to reduce and manage climate-related risks are particularly effective if they tailor individual instruments to the specific requirements of different risk layers.

Modeling for insights not numbers: The long-term low-carbon transformation

Limiting global warming to prevent dangerous climate change requires drastically reducing global greenhouse gases emissions and a transformation towards a low-carbon society. Existing energy- and climate-economic modeling approaches that are informing policy and decision makers in shaping the future net-zero emissions society are increasingly seen with skepticism regarding their ability to forecast the long-term evolution of highly complex, nonlinear social-ecological systems. We present a structured review of state-of-the-art modeling approaches, focusing on their ability and limitations to develop and assess pathways towards a low-carbon society. We find that existing methodological approaches have some fundamental deficiencies that limit their potential to understand the subtleties of long-term low-carbon transformation processes. We suggest that a useful methodological framework has to move beyond current state of the art techniques and has to simultaneously fulfill the following requirements: (1) representation of an inherent dynamic analysis, describing and investigating explicitly the path between different states of system variables, (2) specification of details in the energy cascade, in particular the central role of functionalities and services that are provided by the interaction of energy flows and corresponding stock variables, (3) reliance on a clear distinction between structures of the sociotechnical energy system and socioeconomic mechanisms to develop it and (4) ability to evaluate pathways along societal criteria. To that end we propose the development of a versatile multi-purpose integrated modeling framework, building on the specific strengths of the various modeling approaches available while at the same time omitting their weaknesses. This paper identifies respective strengths and weaknesses to guide such development.

Environmental Policy in an Open Economy: Refocusing Climate Policy to Address International Trade Spillovers

On looking at the development of greenhouse gas emissions over the last few decades, we find that while some countries and regions (such as the EU) have succeeded in reducing territorial emissions, their consumption patterns have often resulted in an increase in emissions elsewhere on the globe (consumption-based emissions). We thus argue that given the current piecemeal nature of (global) climate policy, and in order to address global emission development more adequately, existing policy instruments need to be augmented. We discuss improvements needed in the emission indicator system (i.e. emission accounting beyond the current UNFCCC standards), and identify the core fields of future development in emission reduction policy. These are discussed in some detail to be in consumption-oriented, extraction-oriented, and income-oriented policy instruments. All these are needed in order to ensure effective greenhouse gas emission reduction at the global level.

Global assessment of water challenges under uncertainty in water scarcity projections

Water scarcity, a critical environmental issue worldwide, has primarily been driven by a significant increase in water extractions during the last century. In the coming decades, climate and societal changes are projected to further exacerbate water scarcity in many regions worldwide. Today, a major issue for the ongoing policy debate is to identify interventions able to address water scarcity challenges in the presence of large uncertainties. Here, we take a probabilistic approach to assess global water scarcity projections following feasible combinations of shared socioeconomic pathways and representative concentration pathways for the first half of the twenty-first century. We identify—alongside trends in median water scarcity—changes in the uncertainty range of anticipated water scarcity conditions. Our results show that median water scarcity and the associated range of uncertainty are generally increasing worldwide, including many major river basins. On the basis of these results, we develop a general decision-making framework to enhance policymaking by identifying four representative clusters of specific water policy challenges and needs.Designing interventions to address water scarcity under climate change is challenging given the large uncertainties in projected water availability. In this study, changes in the uncertainty range of anticipated water scarcity conditions are identified, and a general decision-making framework to support policy decisions is developed.