 a Tragedy of the Commons where a common resource is threatened making it difficult to manage costs and benefits between stakeholders; 2) climate change is the BIG cumulative impact of our time. A single session focused on climate change with only two presentations made. One focused on the impact of GHG emission reductions from increasing the fuel efficiency of the US vehicle fleet, the other suggested that EIA focus initial efforts in broading the incorporation of climate change in the cumulative impact assessment component of EIA. Suggestions were made but prototype applications are needed, and not all jurisdictions even currently support cumulative impact assessment within their EIA process.
IAIA in conjunction with the World Bank, hosted a 2-day Symposium on November 2010 in
Washington, DC, on the topic of Climate Change and Impact Assessment.
See the background material including MDBs/IFIs' procedures/strategies, country procedures, good case studies, tools & resources and the background document providing the current “state of practice” details underlying the
Symposium’s main discussion points.
IA is based on establishing a baseline environmental and socio-cultural setting and superimposing the project or programme/policy scenario upon it. IA has not traditionally grappled with the prediction of future changes to the baseline setting, but in some cases major changes in the recent past are included in the description of the setting. Analysis is normally carried out in the assessment of impacts, but incorporation of climate change will require radical change when describing the background setting. Time scales become a more important component to be considered when assessments may precede construction or operational phases by many years.
In addition to describing changes in climate over the anticipated life of the project or programme/policy, the environmental setting will need to include issues such as:
- changes in migration patterns
- changes in biodiversity and distribution ranges of relevant species
- potential changes in harvesting of the affected resources
Biological studies and ecological modeling related to climate change are beginning globally, but considerable work remains to be done. In some cases the potential effects from climate change may be large enough to drastically change conclusions of the IA but further study is still needed to determine what types of systems and projects are the most vulnerable. One of the strong points of the IA process is the consistent manner used to assess the significance of impacts. The assessment of magnitude, duration and likelihood are largely unchanged by incorporating climate change into the process.
Assessment of cumulative impacts are likely to be strongly influenced over time by consideration of climate change. Not all jurisdictions incorporate the assessment of cumulative impacts and in any cases this consideration is limited to the effect of other projects which might have overlapping impacts. As a starting point, incorporation of climate change effects on issues beyond GHG emissions and effect on the project is likely most practically addressed within the context of cumulative impacts.
The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, the most comprehensive review ever carried out on the economics of climate change, was published on October 30 2006 and was lead by Lord Stern, the then Head of the Government Economic Service and former World Bank Chief Economist. The UK Office of Climate Change is a good starting point for further reading.
The UK Climate Impacts Programme (UKCIP) has been helping organizations to adapt to inevitable climate change since 1997. A number of reports and tools are available through http://www.ukcip.org.uk.
Australia established the Department of Climate Change on 3 December 2007 as part of the Prime Minister and Cabinet Portfolio. The Department's web site has a wide range of reports and tools to help assess aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation.
Journal Special Issues
Manuals and Guidelines
Background Document for th