Institute of Development Studies

New IPCC report to raise climate resilience up the scientific agenda

According to the Global Humanitarian Platform, about 300,000 people die and 100 billion USD are lost to climate impacts each year. Current efforts to manage climate risks and improve resilience are falling short and need to be scaled up based on existing experience. The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will produce the first comprehensive assessment on this issue and have invited IDS Fellow Dr Tom Mitchell to be one of its co-ordinating lead authors.

The report ‘Managing the Risks from Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation’ will amongst other things, assess knowledge of how climate change is likely to alter the magnitude and frequency of natural hazards, something we currently know little about. It will also assess how climate change is likely to affects people’s ability to withstand recurrent disasters – reflecting on whether even relatively moderate extremes will do more damage over time.

Dr Mitchell will be a co-ordinating lead author of a chapter focusing on national adaptation and risk management. The chapter will seek to bring together knowledge from long-term experience of managing and reducing the risk of extreme climate events at a national level and provide much needed guidance to national governments on how to confront threats posed by climate change.

This chapter is particularly important because:

•    If a global agreement on climate change is reached in Copenhagen there will be a much greater emphasis on adaptation to climate change at national level
•    Governments parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change have specifically requested further information on the inclusion of disaster risk reduction strategies into national policies and programmes
•    In many countries disaster risk reduction institutions are already in place and may provide efficient channels for delivering adaptation support, especially where climate change institutions are weak.

“That the IPCC has chosen to focus on resilience to current climate variability in order to prepare for climate change is a clear sign of increasing awareness of the need to integrate disaster risk management into climate change strategies.” comments Dr Mitchell.

“A comprehensive assessment such as the one that the report will provide, will help harness the political momentum and resources for enhancing the resilience of poor and vulnerable countries and communities.”