Integrated Socio-Economic Assessment (The Economic Point of View)

Francesco Bosello, Mordechai Shechter

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingChapterpeer-review

Abstract

This section introduces the main methodologies used by the climate change impact science to assess economically the consequences of climate change. Furthermore it presents the main findings of this literature focusing specifically on possible future economic consequences of climate change in the Mediterranean area emphasizing the new knowledge in this field brought by the CIRCE project. The robust finding of the literature points out a low economic vulnerability of Euro-Mediterranean countries (with losses ranging from −0.25 to −1.4% of GDP for extreme temperature scenarios or even slight gains), and a higher vulnerability of North African and Eastern-Mediterranean countries (of roughly 2% of GDP by the mid of the century). Against this background the CIRCE project proposes one of the first attempts to perform a detailed integrated impact assessment exercise focusing on the Mediterranean area. With the IPCC A1B SRES scenario as ­reference, impacts related to energy demand, sea-level rise and tourism, have been economically assessed by a general equilibrium model. The Mediterranean as a whole loses 1.2% of GDP with the Northern-Mediterranean countries clearly less ­vulnerable than the Southern-Mediterranean ones. Among the former the average loss in 2050 is 0.5% of GDP, while among the latter this more than doubles. Particularly adversely affected are Cyprus, Albania and the Eastern Mediterranean region (−1.6, −2.4, −1.5% of GDP respectively in 2050). In terms of impact types, tourism and sea-level rise are clearly the most threatening, while GDP impacts induced by demand re-composition of energy use is less of an issue and often positive.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationAdvances in Global Change Research
PublisherSpringer International Publishing
Pages165-200
Number of pages36
DOIs
StatePublished - 2013

Publication series

NameAdvances in Global Change Research
Volume51
ISSN (Print)1574-0919
ISSN (Electronic)2215-1621

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2013, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.

Keywords

  • Bottom up approaches
  • Climate change
  • Economic impacts and modeling
  • Integrated impact assessment
  • Top-down

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Global and Planetary Change
  • Atmospheric Science
  • Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law

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