Adapting to new climate dearer than U.N. says: report

Olesya Dmitracova, Reuters 27 Aug 09;

LONDON (Reuters) - Adapting to the effects of climate change such as floods and droughts will probably cost many times more than the United Nations estimates, a report said on Thursday ahead of a major U.N. summit in December.

The U.N. climate change secretariat, UNFCCC, puts the global costs of adaptation, through measures such as growing drought-resistant crops and limiting the spread of diseases, at $40 billion to $170 billion a year until 2030.

The range is so broad because of a large degree of uncertainty over some of the costs.

The estimate has been used at U.N. climate meetings this year in the run-up to the December summit in Copenhagen, whose goal is a new international agreement on how to tackle global warming, the study's authors said.

"If governments are working with the wrong numbers, we could end up with a false deal that fails to cover the costs of adaptation to climate change," said Camilla Toulmin, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development.

It co-published the review of the U.N. numbers with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

The report said UNFCCC had produced its numbers too quickly -- "in a matter of weeks" according to the lead author Martin Parry -- and covered the sectors it included only partially.

The authors took six months to update the U.N. estimate, and had it reviewed by seven leading adaptation scientists, including the lead authors of the original U.N. study.

"Just looking in depth at the sectors the UNFCCC did study, we estimate adaptation costs to be two to three times higher, and when you include the sectors the UNFCCC left out the true cost is probably much greater," Parry said in a statement.

"(The costs) are going to be in several hundreds of billions," he later told a news conference, adding that it was difficult to be specific as more studies needed to be done.

The United Nations omitted the costs of adaptation and protection for sectors such as energy, tourism, ecosystems, manufacturing, retailing and mining, the new report said.

The bulk of the adaptation measures and the associated costs will befall developing countries, who are the hardest-hit by global warming, Parry said in an interview.

"No one has estimated that but at a guess it will be at least two thirds (of all costs)," he said.

Poorer nations should be able to draw some of the money from a U.N. Adaptation Fund set up to help them.

The fund is expected to grow from around $80 million in 2009 to about $300 million per year by 2012 -- a paltry sum compared to what developing countries, the United Nations, aid groups and the new report's authors say is necessary.

(Editing by Elizabeth Fullerton)

Climate protection 'to cost more'
Richard Black, BBC News 27 Aug 09;

Protecting societies against the impacts of climate change will be much more expensive than previously believed, according to a new analysis.

In 2007, the UN climate convention came up with a sum of $49-171bn per year.

The new report says the UN sums omitted important factors and the true cost will be two to three times higher.

Developing nations want rich countries to provide major sums for adaptation as part of the new UN climate deal due to be agreed in Copenhagen in December.

"The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement," said lead author Martin Parry, a visiting research fellow with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.

"But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed."

Professor Parry co-chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) working group on climate impacts for its 2007 assessment.

The new report - issued under the aegis of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) and the Grantham Institute - says that some aspects of the UN estimates were wrong by a factor of more than 100.

Call to caution

The UN climate convention (UNFCCC) made its assessment in 2007 after the IPCC concluded the task was too difficult; and Professor Parry suggested it had been done in a hurry, with some vital caveats ignored in subsequent deliberations.

A spokesman for the UNFCCC defended the process but said the organisation had a responsibility to be conservative.

"Looking at what was out there in 2007, these were best estimates, which we simply collected; and we had to err on the side of caution," he said.

Recently the UNFCCC's executive secretary Yvo de Boer has tended to use the figure of $100bn (£60bn) per year.

Professor Parry told BBC News that a key point of the new report, Assessing the Costs of Adaptation to Climate Change, was that it included "bottom-up" as well as "top-down" analyses.

"One study shows the cost of adapting a single watershed in China - that's one of the few case studies that's been done - comes in at a billion dollars a year," he said.

"So when you start adding up the various figures you soon start to exceed the global number (in the UN's analysis)."

He said UNFCCC calculations had taken into account only half of the extra disease burden due to emerge from climate change, assumed low levels of future development in Africa (so giving less infrastructure to protect), used low estimates for sea level rise and had not included the economic costs of nature loss.

Financial key

Securing funds for climate protection, or adaptation, is a key priority for developing countries in the run-up to the Copenhagen conference, which is supposed to secure a new global agreement supplanting the Kyoto Protocol.

Earlier this week the African Union suggested it would be asking for $67bn (£40bn) per year for Africa alone.

"Finance is the key that will unlock the negotiations in Copenhagen," said IIED director Camilla Toulmin.

"But if governments are working with the wrong numbers, we could end up with a false deal that fails to cover the costs of adaptation to climate change."

A priority for the UN climate secretariat is to secure mechanisms that ensure sums of any size can be raised without constantly having to re-negotiate new terms.

Most is expected to be raised through levies on carbon trading, but Mr de Boer believes developed countries will need to pledge up-front sums in the region of $10bn per year.

Further analyses from the World Bank and management consultants McKinsey and Company are due out before the Copenhagen talks.

Climate change will cost the world more than £300 billion, say scientists
The world will have to spend three times as much adapting to the effects of climate change such as flood, disease and deforestation than previously though, scientists have said.
Louise Gray, The Telegraph 27 Aug 09;

The UN originally said it would cost just £25 to £105 billion ($40-170 billion), or the cost of about three Olympic Games per year, from 2030 to pay for the sea defences, increase in deaths and damage to infrastructure caused by global warming.

However a new study by leading scientific body the International Institute for Environment and Development and the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London estimated it will cost more than triple that amount per annum.

The report found that the previous estimates by the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change failed to take into account various factors including the increase in storms in previous years due to global warming, a number of diseases caused by warmer weather and "ecological services" such as rainfall and cloud cover provided by the rainforest.

Professor Martin Parry, a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, said the earlier estimate missed out key sectors such as energy, manufacturing, retailing, mining and tourism. He said the cost will be even more when the full range of impacts of a warming climate are considered such as human migrations and refugees.

“Just looking in depth at the sectors the UNFCCC did study, we estimate adaptation costs to be two to three higher, and when you include the sectors the UNFCCC left out the true cost is probably much greater,” he said.

Prof Parry said the UK alone would have to spend "several billion" on flood defence, rebuilding roads and upgrading houses against the heat.

"The UK alone is going to be several billion so the global numbers have to be more than the UN is currently talking about," he said.

Prof Parry was talking 100 days before more than 90 countries meet in Copenhagen for a UNFCCC conference on climate change. The meeting over two weeks is expected to come up with a new deal to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Rich countries are expected to make drastic cuts to carbon emissions in order to slow global warming but poorer countries are unlikely to agree to anything until they are confident the world will provide enough money for adaptation. At the moment the Governments of developed countries have only committed to around £60 billion per annum.

Prof Parry said a lot more money needs to be made available.

“The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement,” he said. “But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed.”

International aid agency Oxfam staged a stunt at London Aquarium to raise awareness of the meeting at Copenhagen.

Barbara Stocking, Chief Executive of Oxfam, said the photograph of an ordinary family under the water was intended to illustrate the risk of sea level rise if nothing is done to stop global warming.

“This light-hearted photo sends a very serious message – it is time for politicians to act in Copenhagen if we are to avoid catastrophic climate change. Today the poorest people are being hit hard by extreme weather events and other climate shocks, it is for their sake that we must push for a fair deal in Copenhagen," she said.

Oxfam wants leaders in rich countries to commit to a 40 per cebt cut in carbon emissions by 2020 and earmark at least £93 billion a year to help poor countries adapt to the impact of climate change and reduce their emissions.

Annual cost of climate change 'will be £190bn'
UN has underestimated financial burden of global warming, study finds
Steve Connor, The Independent 28 Aug 09;

The true global cost of adapting to climate change is likely to be many times greater than official United Nations' estimates: in 2030 alone, the world could be spending more than three times the annual budget of the NHS, a study has found.

A team of British experts has discovered that the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has seriously underestimated the expected annual cost of dealing with climate impacts. It suggests that the true cost could be at least two or three-fold greater, and possibly much more if other hidden factors are taken into account.

Estimates of how much the world will have to spend annually on adapting to some of the worst impacts of climate change have varied widely, but the UNFCCC has suggested that typically it could be about $70bn or $100bn (£44bn and £63bn) by 2030, the cost of about three Beijing Olympics. But other scientists have now suggested that the true annual cost could easily reach $300bn or more.

"Just looking in depth at the sectors the UNFCCC did study, we estimate adaptation costs to be two to three times higher, and when you include sectors the UNFCCC left out, the true cost is probably much greater," said Professor Martin Parry, the lead author of the report, Assessing the Cost of Adaptation to Climate Change. "The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate-change agreement. But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed," added the professor, a visiting fellow at the Grantham Institute at Imperial College London.

Adaptations to climate change include the additional spending needed to improve measures such as building new flood defences and transporting water for agriculture, treating an increase in the range and severity of diseases, and replacing buildings and other infrastructure affected by rising temperatures or water levels.

The UNFCCC had commissioned a series of studies to address the estimated costs of several adaptation measures but it was under pressure to produce results in a short time period and the studies were not fully reviewed by outside experts, Professor Parry said.

"Many of the previous estimates, it would be fair to say, were based on back-of-the-envelope calculations. In fact, one person said they were written on the back of a metro ticket. We think these numbers are underestimates... they don't stack up," Professor Parry said.

The authors of the report said that the costs of adapting to climate change begin to soar aftere other sectors of the economy not dealt with by the UNFCCC are taken into consideration. They includes tourism, energy and manufacturing. The sectors the UNFCCC did deal with were treated in only a partial manner, the report says.

One of the biggest underestimates is the additional cost of building new homes, offices, roads and other infrastructure affected by climate change. This cost alone could be many times higher than previous estimates.