Page 84 - Climate Change and Food Systems

climate change and food systems: global assessments and implications for food security and trade
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Costing adaptation
Estimating the cost of adaptation remains a methodological challenge. While the need for such estimates the local and global levels is clear, there is little consensus on the size and scope
of such estimates due to definitional and measurement difficulties (IPCC, 2014). The few existing
global estimates of adaptation cost suffer from a general lack of empirical grounding at the local scale, creating inconsistent adaptation estimates across scales (Agrawala and Fankhauser, 2008). Likewise, local or “project”-level adaptation costing is also rare and fraught with measurement difficulties. The traditional approach of cost benefit analysis (CBA) applied to “adaptation projects” raises several conceptual issues which limit its applicability for evaluating adaptation (Handmer et al., 2012). The main difficulty is data availability and its quality. Costs and benefits are location-specific, and calculating localized impacts requires detailed geographical knowledge of climate change impacts that are either unavailable or are subject to uncertainty (Refsgaard et al., 2013). Many actions have an influence on the impact of climate change without being adaptation projects per
se (e.g. enhanced building norms). Also many “adaptation projects” have consequences beyond a reduction in climate change impacts. Valuation and decision-making cannot be separated from the institutional and social contexts (e.g. what is considered as a right), and CBA must also take into account non-market costs and benefits (Hallegatte et al., 2012). More broadly, CBA rarely takes into account resource depletion, environmental change and distributional issues.
Some argue for a shift in economic thinking related to planning climate-compatible adaptation policy away from a single-discipline focus on CBA and toward an inter-disciplinary multi- dimensional risk analysis (Barker, 2008). Under such an approach, the criteria of robustness, resilience and flexibility are important considerations in evaluating the merits of alternative adaptation options. One approach that has been used in many national adaptation plans of action (NAPA) is Multi-Criteria Analysis (MCA) - a method that recognizes the need to balance among multiple, potentially competing objectives (Keeney and Raiffa, 1993; Martinez-Alier et al., 1998). Using multiple criteria, decision-makers can include a range of social, environmental, technical and economic factors – mainly by quantifying and displaying trade-offs. The MCA is also favoured over CBA when there is lack of financial and economic data to quantify benefits and costs of adaptation. A number of tools based on the MCA framework have been produced. As an illustration, Miller and Belton (2013) report on the United Nations Environment Programme’s MCA4climate (UNEP, 2011), used to help formulate adaptation water policy for Yemen. The authors find a high degree of interdependence of the adaptation options available to policy makers. Also, the effectiveness of many behavioral responses to policy change hinge on the presence or absence of governance reforms.
place outside any government planning. The net impact of climate change will determine whether additional measures by planned adaptation are needed (Konrad and Thumy, 2014). Adaptive capacity is defined as the ability of a system
to adjust to climate change (including climate variability and extremes), moderate potential damages, or take advantage of opportunities, or
cope with the consequences. Agricultural adaptive capacity varies greatly by location, resource endowments, and institutional context of the farmer. Uncertainty is a salient aspect of climate change, has an important influence on the type of adaptation actions and investment decisions to be made, and requires risk management strategies (preventive and risk pooling and diversification
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