Journal
GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE-HUMAN AND POLICY DIMENSIONS
Volume 21, Issue 2, Pages 575-591Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2010.11.003
Keywords
Scenarios; Integrated assessment; Climate change; Mitigation; Adaptation; Climate impacts
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Funding
- EU
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Scenarios are used to explore the consequences of different adaptation and mitigation strategies under uncertainty. In this paper, two scenarios are used to explore developments with (1) no mitigation leading to an increase of global mean temperature of 4 degrees C by 2100 and (2) an ambitious mitigation strategy leading to 2 degrees C increase by 2100. For the second scenario, uncertainties in the climate system imply that a global mean temperature increase of 3 degrees C or more cannot be ruled out. Our analysis shows that, in many cases, adaptation and mitigation are not trade-offs but supplements. For example, the number of people exposed to increased water resource stress due to climate change can be substantially reduced in the mitigation scenario, but adaptation will still be required for the remaining large numbers of people exposed to increased stress. Another example is sea level rise, for which, from a global and purely monetary perspective, adaptation (up to 2100) seems more effective than mitigation. From the perspective of poorer and small island countries, however, stringent mitigation is necessary to keep risks at manageable levels. For agriculture, only a scenario based on a combination of adaptation and mitigation is able to avoid serious climate change impacts. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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