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Recent evidence shows that climate change is leading to irreversible and existential impacts on vulnerable communities and countries across the globe. Among other effects, this has given rise to public debate and engagement around notions of climate crisis and emergency. The Loss and Damage (L&D) policy debate has emphasized these aspects over the last three decades. Yet, despite institutionalization through an article on L&D by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in the Paris Agreement, the debate has remained vague, particularly with reference to its remit and relationship to adaptation policy and practice. Research has recently made important strides forward in terms of developing a science perspective on L&D. This article reviews insights derived from recent publications by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and others, and presents the implications for science and policy. Emerging evidence on hard and soft adaptation limits in certain systems, sectors and regions holds the potential to further build momentum for climate policy to live up to the Paris ambition of stringent emission reductions and to increase efforts to support the most vulnerable. L&D policy may want to consider actions to extend soft adaptation limits and spur transformational, that is, non-standard risk management and adaptation, so that limits are not breached. Financial, technical, and legal support would be appropriate for instances where hard limits are transgressed. Research is well positioned to further develop robust evidence on critical and relevant risks at scale in the most vulnerable countries and communities, as well as options to reduce barriers and limits to adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is a lot of rhetoric suggesting that disaster risk reduction (DRR) pays, yet surprisingly little in the way of hard facts. This review paper examines the evidence regarding the economic efficiency of DRM based on CBA. Specifically, it addresses the following questions: What can be said about current and best practice regarding CBA for DRR including limitations and alternatives? And, what, if at all, can be said in terms of quantitative insight for informing policy and practice? The review compares the documented evidence on the net benefits over a range of disaster management interventions, such as risk reduction, preparedness and risk financing. The review also critically discusses the applicability of cost-benefit analysis as well as other economic decision-supporting tools for assessing the efficiency of certain DRM interventions. Disaster risk is characterized by variability, which requires a risk-based assessment. As a key best practice criterion, and in order to avoid overestimating the benefits and returns on investment, the review focuses on studies that provide a risk-based estimate of benefits. This review shows that for the limited evidence reported the economic case for DRM across a range of hazards is strong and that the benefits of investing in DRM outweigh the costs of doing so on average, by about four times the cost in terms of avoided and reduced losses. In an age of austerity, cost-benefit analysis continues to be an important tool for prioritizing efficient DRM measures but with a shifting emphasis from infrastructure-based options (hard resilience) to preparedness and systemic interventions (soft resilience), other tools such as cost-effectiveness analysis, multi-criteria analysis and robust decision-making approaches deserve more attention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Major natural disasters in recent years have had high human and economic costs, and triggered record high postdisaster relief from governments and international donors. Given the current economic situation worldwide, selecting the most effective disaster risk reduction (DRR) measures is critical. This is especially the case for low- and middle-income countries, which have suffered disproportionally more economic and human losses from disasters. This article discusses a methodology that makes use of advanced probabilistic catastrophe models to estimate benefits of DRR measures. We apply such newly developed models to generate estimates for hurricane risk on residential structures on the island of St. Lucia, and earthquake risk on residential structures in Istanbul, Turkey, as two illustrative case studies. The costs and economic benefits for selected risk reduction measures are estimated taking account of hazard, exposure, and vulnerability. We conclude by emphasizing the advantages and challenges of catastrophe model-based cost-benefit analyses for DRR in developing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To explore the relationship between tropospheric ozone and radiative forcing with changing emissions, we compiled two sets of global scenarios for the emissions of the ozone precursors methane (CH4), carbon monoxide (CO), non-methane volatile organic compounds (NMVOC) and nitrogen oxides (NOx) up to the year 2030 and implemented them in two global Chemistry Transport Models. The "Current Legislation" (CLE) scenario reflects the current perspectives of individual countries on future economic development and takes the anticipated effects of presently decided emission control legislation in the individual countries into account. In addition, we developed a "Maximum technically Feasible Reduction" (MFR) scenario that outlines the scope for emission reductions offered by full implementation of the presently available emission control technologies, while maintaining the projected levels of anthropogenic activities. Whereas the resulting projections of methane emissions lie within the range suggested by other greenhouse gas projections, the recent pollution control legislation of many Asian countries, requiring introduction of catalytic converters for vehicles, leads to significantly lower growth in emissions of the air pollutants NOx, NMVOC and CO than was suggested by the widely used and more pessimistic IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) SRES (Special Report on Emission Scenarios) scenarios (Nakicenovic et al., 2000), which made Business-as-Usual assumptions regarding emission control technology. With the TM3 and STOCHEM models we performed several long-term integrations (1990-2030) to assess global, hemispheric and regional changes in CH4, CO, hydroxyl radicals, ozone and the radiative climate forcings resulting from these two emission scenarios. Both models reproduce broadly the observed trends in CO, and CH4 concentrations from 1990 to 2002. For the "current legislation" case, both models indicate an increase of the annual average ozone levels in the Northern Hemisphere by 5 ppbv, and up to 15 ppbv over the Indian sub-continent, comparing the 2020s (2020-2030) with the 1990s (1990 2000). The corresponding higher ozone and methane burdens in the atmosphere increase radiative forcing by approximately 0.2 Wm-2. Full application of today's emissions control technologies, however, would bring down ozone below the levels experienced in the 1990s and would reduce the radiative forcing of ozone and methane to approximately -0.1 Wm-2. This can be compared to the 0.14-0.47 Wm-2 increase of methane and ozone radiative forcings associated with the SRES scenarios. While methane reductions lead to lower ozone burdens and to less radiative forcing, further reductions of the air pollutants NOx and NMVOC result in lower ozone, but at the same time increase the lifetime of methane. Control of methane emissions appears an efficient option to reduce tropospheric ozone as well as radiative forcing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]