Shaping climate-resilient development

Societies need to understand how and where they must adapt to climate change. This is a particularly urgent priority for the custodians of national and local economies, such as finance ministers and mayors. These decision-makers ask: What is the potential climate-related loss to our economies and societies over the coming decades? How much of that loss can we avert, with what measures? What investment will be required to fund those measures - and will the benefits of that investment outweigh the costs?

The report "Shaping Climate-Resilient Development" aims to provide decision-makers with a systematic way of answering these questions. Authored by the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) working group, it gives national and local leaders the facts to understand the impact of climate on their economies and identify actions to minimize that impact at the lowest cost to society. The ECA methodology has been tested across hugely diverse locations, representing a variety of climate hazards, economic impacts and development stages.

Case studies on US-Florida, UK-City of Hull, India, Guyana, Tanzania, Mali, China and Samoa are included in the report. They found that existing climate patterns are responsible for annualized losses of 1-12% of GDP and are likely to rise up to 19% of GDP by 2030. This is a worrying trend.  But the good news is that cost-effective adaptation measures can prevent anywhere between 40 and 68 percent of the expected economic loss in the regions studied.

The Economics of Climate Adaptation working group is a partnership between the Global Environment Facility, McKinsey & Company, Swiss Re, the Rockefeller Foundation, ClimateWorks Foundation, the European Commission, and Standard Chartered Bank.