Adaptation

Towards Global Coordination of the Impacts, Adaptation and

Vulnerability (IAV) Research Community: First Steps









This is a draft report compiled from the Workshop on Climate Change Impacts,

Adaptation and Vulnerability (IAV) Community Coordination held on

8-9 January 2009 at NCAR in Boulder, CO, USA









This workshop was sponsored by:



The Institute for the Study of Society and the Environment (ISSE)



The Analysis, Integration and Modeling of the Earth System (AIMES); and



The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR)

1. Introduction

This brief report summarizes discussions and thoughts from participants at a recent workshop

on improving coordination in the climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability (IAV)

research community. The timing of the workshop (January 2009) coincided with ongoing

preparations for the Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) of the Intergovernmental Panel on

Climate Change (IPCC). Its goals were two-fold: (1) to initiate discussions that would

contribute to an upcoming meeting in Amsterdam on „Lessons Learned from AR4: Moving

Adaptation and Mitigation Forward‟ and (2) to develop a straw man outline for the broader

community on approaches for contributing to improved coordination of IAV research and

enhanced communication with other IPCC Working Groups. Specific goals outlined in the

background paper to the Boulder workshop were:

(a) To discuss appropriate strategies and avenues for communicating and

coordinating research efforts within the IAV community and between IAV and

climate modeling (CM) and integrated assessment modeling (IAM) groups.

(b) To develop a small set of agreed potential questions and issues which distinguish

the global strategic contribution of IAV research from that of other research

communities, during and beyond the development of IPCC AR5.

(c) To provide feedback to the CM and IAM scenarios groups on the most effective

approaches for developing, interpreting and distributing socioeconomic scenarios

and narrative story lines that meet the needs of both impact and adaptation

assessments as well as regionally grounded assessments of the feasibility and

effectiveness of mitigation options.





The primary intention of this document is to provide a proposal for coordinating and

structuring IAV activities internationally. The hope is that the discussions held in Boulder can

provide a springboard for further discussion, refinement and then implementation of a

coordination plan, with a view on strengthening the IAV research base and disseminating

IAV knowledge to the wider scientific community, to decision-makers and to the public at

large.









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2. Rationale

Over a period of many years, the impacts adaptation and vulnerability (IAV) community has

developed a diverse toolbox of empirical, experimental, theoretical and modeling approaches

for undertaking impact and vulnerability assessments, for investigating the processes of

adaptation and for addressing the full complexity of dimensions and scales of adaptation

actions. Typically, this richness is spread across a diversity of disciplines, institutions and

individuals, often emanating from small research centers or individual researchers, but

generally lacking overall coherence and structure. This has at least two implications: (1) it is

difficult to harmonize or compare assumptions, tools and research practices within and across

different groups, constraining effective communication and evaluation of results; (2) it is

difficult to deliver clear, consensus messages to the climate, development and integrated

assessment modeling communities, and similarly, for these groups to gain a clear channel of

communication with the IAV community.

Prior to the Boulder workshop, an email was distributed in late August, 2008 to more than 90

colleagues in the international IAV community, inviting participation in a process of self-

organization. About 40 responded positively with interest, thoughts, and some suggestions of

other persons to contact and other activities to link up with. Responses to the initial queries

that would provide both the links and possible foci for the IAV research community included:





 Connecting with the IPCC new scenarios process, including integrating climate change

scenarios into a risk/vulnerability management perspective and influencing the design,

delivery and interpretation of the scenarios



 Playing a leadership role in the development of the proposed new “library” of

socioeconomic scenarios and story lines



 Strengthening the representation of adaptation research in IPCC and other climate

change science arenas



 Increasing attention to relationships between adaptation and mitigation



Suggestions about how to move toward a coordinated structure for channeling information,

seeking community support, and representing our knowledge and interests included:

 Determining who among the IAV community would like to be involved in the new

scenarios process



 Identifying which IAV researchers would like to use the new scenarios and what they

would like to get from them







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 Identifying who would like to be involved in the development of socioeconomic

scenarios and story lines



 Identifying who would like to be involved in interactions with IPCC and other

international organizations about climate change adaptation.



A network approach was proposed to develop structures for coordinating international IAV

research activities, with a view on developing an international research agenda and possible

new programs. This would require coordinated IAV research efforts embracing, for example,

basic research, model inter-comparison studies (e.g., IGBP/GAIM/GCTE), thresholds,

irreversibility, collection of new information and studies on observed impacts and

adaptations, provision of models, tools, data and scenarios, development of guidance for IAV

practitioners, workshops and conferences to exchange information and design new

collaborative research and organization of training courses. It was clear that a network

should be science/research based, should encompass basic and applied/synthetic research and

the humble acknowledgment that a single network may not serve all needs.





3. Overarching Themes and Organizational Nuclei for IAV

Participants were charged with identifying issues of highest importance for improving IAV

knowledge, what possible foci could be considered for IAV action and what the possible

linkages with other climate change science communities might be. Four questions that

encompass IAV research issues were suggested:

1. How much adaptation do we need between now and around 2030 in order to cope with

„inevitable‟ climate change?

2. What are the likely climate impacts over the 21st century taking into account adaptation?

What are the unavoidable impacts? What are the likely impacts from a range of

scenarios?

3. What are the processes, relationships and interactions in human and natural systems that

result in vulnerability to climate change?

4. What are the interactions between mitigation and adaptation? Where are they mutually

exclusive and where do they overlap or generate feedbacks?





Through discussion in break out groups it was possible to frame these questions in some

detail, explore implementation strategies, and identify required interactions with other

groups. From a structural perspective, workshop participants identified nine possible





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organizational nuclei whereby the four themes could be addressed either independently, or

through integration. The proposed nuclei suggest that the structure for the community need

not form a single group but rather consist of a number of related groups that come together

under a single coordinated network to address proposed research themes in an integrative

fashion. The nine research areas, or organizational nuclei proposed were:

1. Impacts and adaptation assessment:

 Impacts of climate change in the past, present, and future (e.g. studies related to

paleoclimate reconstruction, environmental history, empirical studies of extreme events

and model-based estimates of future changes)

 Observations, experiments, and models (the need for harmonized multi-scale models and

for the use of meta-analyses and meta-frameworks)

 Modeling and development of quantitative and qualitative tools for assessments (this

also considers aggregation issues such as emergent properties and non-linear responses)



2. Investigation of risk uncertainty and decision making

3. Storyline and scenario development, their application, communication (within the

community) and distribution at a range of scales.



4. Adaptation: past, present and future

 Adaptive management, measuring and monitoring

 Assessment of adaptation interventions

 Community based adaptation and sustainable livelihoods

 Limits to adaptation



5. Processes interacting with vulnerability

 Institutions and governance; decisions, decision-making and decision support

 Demographic processes: migration and mobility

 Political and economic processes (socio-political) determining development pathways

(e.g., failed states, non-states, stumbling states)

 Inter-comparison of research findings from vulnerability assessments; what are the

common frameworks and how can they be better harnessed to draw generalizations?



6. Costing and valuation: monetary, non-monetary and social

7. Observations and data systems

 Observations of changes and historical human/environmental interactions

 Detection and attribution of impacts from anthropogenic causes

 Need for observatory applications – historical, anthropological, etc.

 Need to work with people who collect and synthesize datasets not necessarily related to

climate change, but integral to measuring impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (foe

example, human/environment interactions, institutional dimensions, socioeconomic and

demographic indicators, species distributions, climate conditions)



8. Integration of impacts, adaptation and vulnerability





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 Interactions with mitigation of climate change

 Regional integration



9. Extreme events, thresholds and key vulnerabilities





4. First Steps Towards Self-Organization



Workshop participants proposed several opportunities and goals for near-, mid- and longer-

term coordination and network development. Some opportunities for continued discussion

through upcoming meetings and workshops were identified but, as noted in the long-term

planning, the small group that convened in Boulder recognized that there is a much larger

IAV constituency that would need a voice. Specifically, workshop participants suggested

various opportunities for future IAV network development:



Near-Term Opportunities

Continue discussions and further develop ideas proposed in the Boulder workshop at several

upcoming meetings:



Workshops Specifically Targeting IAV Communities

 Amsterdam late January 2009

 Planned meeting in Brazil, late 2009, explicitly targeting developing country

participation

Other Planned Meetings of Opportunity

 World Climate Conference 3 (WMO/WCRP Climate prediction and information for

decision-making, Geneva, Switzerland: 31 August – 4 September 2009:

http://www.wmo.int/pages/world_climate_conference/index_en.html

 IHDP Open Meeting: 26-30 April 2009, Bonn, Germany: http://www.ihdp.org/

Near-term Action Items

 Continue to develop and expand network email list (perhaps set up a server?)

 This report as input to Amsterdam – towards a White Paper (Hibbard/Romero-Lankao,

Wilbanks)

 Boulder Workshop report for EOS Transactions (Palutikof to lead)



Proposed Mid-Term Activities

 Further develop and formalize an IAV network

 Circulate, revise and finalize White Paper from Boulder/Amsterdam meeting

 Begin inquiries to agencies for scoping and international IAV meetings

 Promote the exchange of ideas/opportunities for IAV

 Education and Training, specifically with regard for cross-WG tool utilities

 Outreach and Capacity Building: pursue links with START, IAI and APN

 Propose a session with IAM consortium to build bridges to IA and the new scenarios

process

 Enhance linkages among the IPCC Working Groups for the parallel process of scenario

and storyline development



Proposed Long-Term Goals

This element of self-organization was left purposefully open-ended. Workshop participants

strongly recognized that the small group in Boulder was not sufficiently representative of the



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community to make statements on long-term IAV goals. However, workshop participants

envisioned that by 2010 and beyond, an IAV science network, or system of networks, would

be undergoing a rapid phase of development, with a coherent suite of achievements and needs

emerging that could be highlighted through an international Open Meeting at a date to be

determined later.









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Boulder Workshop Participants and their Affiliation (USA unless stated)



David Bader PCMDI/LLNL

Bethany Bradley Princeton University

Lawrence Buja* NCAR

Timothy Carter Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE), Finland

Lisa Dilling University of Colorado

David Dodman International Institute for Environment and Development, UK

Kristie L. Ebi ESS, LLC

Seita Emori National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan

Chris Field Carnegie Institute

Mary Hayden NCAR

Kathy Hibbard* NCAR

Yasuaki Hijioka National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan

Lori Hunter University of Colorado at Boulder

Roger Jones CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, Australia

Marc Levy Center for International Earth Science Information Network

Shannon McNeeley NCAR

Gerald Meehl NCAR

Kathleen Miller NCAR

Brian O'Neill NCAR

Dennis Ojima Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment

Jean Palutikof National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility, Australia

Roger Pulwarty NOAA

Paty Romero-Lankao* NCAR, US and Mexico

Cynthia Rosenzweig NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies

Joel Smith Stratus Consulting

Pam Stephens National Science Foundation

Kiyoshi Takahashi National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan

Kathleen Tierney University of Colorado

William R. Travis University of Colorado

John Tribbia NCAR

Jean-Pascal van Ypersele Université catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Rachel Warren University of Cambridge, UK

Richard Warrick University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia

Thomas Wilbanks* Oak Ridge National Laboratory

Ilana Wainer Universidade de Sao Paulo, Brazil

Olga Wilhelmi NCAR



* Indicates co-organizer of workshop