Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe ... - MemoFin.fr

Introductionconsider climate change along with othersocio‐economic developments. The underlyingsocio‐economic and demographic projections areexplained in Section 1.5.2.1.5.2 Socio‐economic scenariosThe risks and vulnerabilities of regions, sectorsand population groups are determined bychanges in climatic conditions as well as bydemographic, social, economic, political,technological and environmental changes. (Fornotational convenience, the following text refersto the full range of non‐climatic developmentssimply as 'socio‐economic developments'.) Severalstudies assessing future consequences of climatechange use complex models and other methodsthat incorporate assumptions and scenariosfor socio‐economic developments in additionto climate projections. On the one hand, theintegration of climatic and socio‐economic scenariosallows for a more realistic assessment of futureconsequences of climate change, in particular iffuture socio‐economic developments are fairlywell known (e.g. demographic changes). Theyalso facilitate estimates of the relative importanceof various changes, such as rising sea level versuspopulation migration, in climate-sensitive risks (butsuch analyses are not always done). On the otherhand, the inclusion of uncertain socio‐economicscenarios may further increase the uncertainty ofprojections, which may make them less amenable todecision‐makers.Socio‐economic developments have a significant(and often dominant) role in the exposure andvulnerabilities of regions, sectors or populationgroups to climatic and other hazards. The social,technological, economic, environmental and politicaldevelopments determine the socio‐economiccontext within which climate change is experienced,and can therefore strongly influence climatechange‐related risks and vulnerabilities ( 28 ). Keysocio‐economic variables include: economic wealthand commodity prices developments; sectoraldevelopments and technological innovation;population dynamics (e.g. growth, ageing and spatialdistribution); consumption patterns and lifestyles;settlement patterns (e.g. urban growth and sprawl);infrastructure developments; land cover and land use.Strong inter-linkages and feedbacks exist betweenthe different drivers of socio‐economic change, whichrequire a consistent and comprehensive considerationin scenario studies.Most recent integrated assessments of climatechange in Europe, including those presentedin this report, are based on the IPCC SRES(see Section 1.5.1). The SRES scenarios provideinternally consistent socio‐economic storylines andGHG emissions scenarios for four world regionsthat can support climate change and climate impactassessments. The studies supporting the indicatorspresented in Chapters 2, 3 and 4 of this reportgenerally rely on the SRES emissions scenarios(see Table 1.3 for details). The projects presentedin the chapter on vulnerability to climate change(Chapter 5) use a range of SRES socio‐economic andclimate scenarios.Recently, alternative socio‐economic scenarios havebeen developed globally and at the European scalein connection with the IPCC AR5 (see Box 1.1).In Europe, this has occurred, for example, inconnection with the study on 'Climate adaptation— modelling water scenarios and sectoralimpacts' (ClimWatAdapt) ( 29 ). Section 5.2 presentsselected results for floods and for water scarcityand droughts. The ClimWatAdapt project andits predecessor SCENES envisaged an iterativeparticipatory process to develop (both qualitativeand quantitative) scenarios of Europe's freshwaterup to 2050, entitled 'Economy First (EcF)','Fortress Europe (FoE)', 'Policy Rules (PoR)' and'Sustainability Eventually (SuE)'.The next generation of emissions andsocio‐economic scenarios will serve IPCC's AR5.(Moss et al., 2010) describes in detail the process bywhich they are being developed to take advantageof the latest scientific advances on the response ofthe Earth system to changes in radiative forcingas well as knowledge on how societies respondthrough changes in technology, economies, lifestyleand policy. The research community took up thetask of developing new scenarios by departingfrom the sequential approach of the latest set ofSRES scenarios from the IPCC. Their approachincludes the parallel development of new climatescenarios (based on the four representativeconcentration pathways or RCPs (van Vuuren et al.,2011) and new socio‐economic scenarios with amore regional approach that enable exploration ofimportant socio‐economic uncertainties affectingboth adaptation and mitigation.. The new scenarios( 28 ) See Section 1.7 for a discussion of the terms 'vulnerability' and 'risk' and their use in this report.( 29 ) See http://www.climwatadapt.eu.40 Climate change, impacts and vulnerability in Europe 2012