Publication: Economic Evaluation of Climate Change Adaptation Projects: Approaches for the Agricultural Sector and Beyond
Date
2010
ISSN
Published
2010
Author(s)
World Bank
Abstract
This paper identifies key challenges and
solutions for carrying out project-level economic analysis
of adaptation to climate change, both stand-alone and
integrated into broader development projects. Very few
projects addressing adaptation thus far have been subject to
in-depth and rigorous economic analysis for a variety of
reasons, including a lack of guidance on how to deal with
assessments of the impacts of climate change, as well as
with estimating costs and benefits of adaptation under
uncertainty. The paper focus is on the agricultural sector,
where the impacts of climate change have the potential to
disrupt the livelihoods of rural populations in many regions
and where adaptation must be given urgent consideration.
Nevertheless, some of the approaches discussed are suitable
to projects in other sectors as well. Finally, robust
decision making (RDM) can provide an alternative
quantitative decision analytic method that avoids subjective
probability assessments and scenario predictions. RDM
creates hundreds or thousands of plausible futures, in the
judgment of the analyst, that are then used to
systematically evaluate the performance of alternative
actions. This approach facilitates identifying the set of
conditions under which any particular alternative adaptation
performs well or poorly, according to various evaluation
criteria based on the decision maker's judgment. The
decision maker can identify 'robust' alternatives
that, compared to other alternatives, perform reasonably
well across a wide range of plausible futures.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“World Bank. 2010. Economic Evaluation of Climate Change Adaptation Projects: Approaches for the Agricultural Sector and Beyond. © Washington, DC. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/27752 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO.”