Conference: Cross-border climate change impacts and systemic risks in Europe and beyond

Climate impacts in one location that propagate to other locations through trade and value chains, development and security policies, and financial systems, may have disrupting effects similar to the COVID-19 pandemic and the war on Ukraine. These effects are not easily represented in traditional analysis frameworks and need to be embedded in the wider context of social vulnerability and climate change.

The conference aims to bring together scientists across disciplines that work on approaches to better understand and respond to cross-border climate impacts and risks. The conference also seeks to identify knowledge gaps and directions for future research. Research presented in the conference will highlight what needs arise from a consideration of cross-border climate impacts, how to design research that is actionable for decision-making or how to improve the monitoring of risks.

SEI Speakers

Several SEI researchers will be speaking at the event. Read highlights below of what to expect:

Multilateral adaptation finance for systemic resilience: Addressing cross-border climate risks

Research increasingly highlights cross-border climate risks but multilateral adaptation finance continues to treat climate risk largely as a local phenomenon. According to our analysis of adaptation projects funded by three major multilateral climate funds, funding for regional and multi-country projects tends to address common risks (e.g., drought or cyclones) rather than risks that cross national borders (e.g., climate driven migration). Multilateral adaptation finance can and should do more to address these cross-border climate risks. Interventions that focus on the whole system rather than individual countries can deliver shared benefits for both recipients and contributors.

We foresee two ways to operationalize systemic resilience in adaptation finance. First, current funding models can effectively address certain types of cross-border climate risk, at lower levels of complexity, by supporting regional cooperation and dialogue and enhancing local resilience. Second, other types of cross-border climate risks, including those that are more complex, will require established actors to adopt paradigm-shifting approaches, and to involve actors new to adaptation finance. Such approaches would shift focus from short-term projects in individual countries to long-term cooperation between countries. Multilateral actors seeking to build systemic resilience face significant obstacles, but recipient and contributor countries each have incentives to invest in management of shared climate risks.

Is the UNFCCC ready to handle the reality of cross-border climate risks?

The negotiations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) have shaped countries’ roles and responsibilities for planning, implementing and supporting adaptation action. In their adaptation planning and implementation, countries have prioritised addressing climate risks that arise within their borders. This focus on domestic adaptation is reflected in the financial, technological and capacity-building support that wealthy countries provide to poorer ones.

Climate impacts in one country can create risks and necessitate adaptation in other countries due to cross-border connectivity within regions and globally. Likewise, adaptation measures taken in one part of the world can alter transboundary links and flows, with consequences that ripple out far beyond their point of origin.

This presentation will discuss the global goal on adaptation and its opportunity to update the adaptation narrative in response to the new reality of complex climate risks. It will highlight the framework’s need to recognise adaptation as a global challenge, calling for international cooperation to address transboundary climate risks, in line with the Paris Agreement. It will also discuss the framework’s possibility to mark a new phase in the institutionalisation of adaptation under the UNFCCC and the Paris Agreement.

Debate: Does the EU need a Directorate General (DG) RESILIENCE?

A classic tension exists between proponents of “mainstreaming” and institutional reform: is it better to address novel policy challenges via dedicated, stand-alone strategies, processes and even institutions, or to integrate them into existing ones?

Europe is beginning to grapple with the prospect of more extreme, cascading climate change risks, originating from both within and beyond its borders. Climate change is a risk magnifier; these risks occur within the domain of existing policies, such as health, critical infrastructure, finance, security, trade, etc. and, as such, existing policies can adapt to account for them. Meanwhile, European society is increasingly exposed to a number of other cascading, interacting, systemic, even existential risks, including those driven by changes in cyber security, health pandemics, financial crises, biodiversity collapse, artificial intelligence and violent conflict. Many measures to build resilience to one of these risks will create resilience benefits in the face of other risks: they are related and in some ways similar.

Should the EU aim to build resilience by mainstreaming climate and other forms of resilience into existing policies and policy domains? Or does it require a new institution – a “DG RESILIENCE”, for example – to lead and coordinate such efforts?

This debate session will present the cases for and against creating a DG RESILIENCE, drawing on perspectives emerging from the CASCADES project analysis of policy recommendations to build European resilience. After opening statements, each side of the debate will get the chance to respond to the arguments brought by his or her opponent.

The debate will be followed by an audience vote to determine who has won. The case “for” will be given by Magnus Benzie (SEI) and the case “against” by Ruth Townend (Chatham House).

Register below to join the debate!

A framework and typologies for responding to cross-border climate change impacts

Climate change adaptation is most often defined as a local and national governance issue. While the scientific literature recognizes the potential significance of cross-border climate impacts and new methods are being developed for the assessment of risks and opportunities associated with them, adaptation planning approaches are mostly confined within tightly defined sectoral contexts or specific geographical regions. These approaches overlook transmission of impacts across sectors and borders and fail to lay the groundwork for systemic responses and cross-scale solutions for transnational adaptation governance.

We propose a conceptual framework for identifying and filtering different types of responses to cross-border climate impacts. The framework provides typologies of cross-border climate impacts and responses to them and defines actor constellations who may take ownership in addressing impacts.

The response framework presents a sequence of steps to investigate the suitability of historical responses to cross-border climate impacts and map policy gaps and under-represented response types. The framework enhances the understanding of opportunities and challenges for global collaboration on adaptation. It has the potential to inform and assist policymakers to identify suitable intervention points for adaptation responses. For instance, this could include anticipating whether: (a) collaboration with actors across scales and jurisdictions should be broad or targeted, (b) reliance on internal adaptation and domestic capacity would be sufficient to achieve the desired results, and (c) combining different modalities would be advisable to accommodate short-term adaptation and long-term resilience-building.

Join us for an in-depth discussion.

Keynote speakers

• Johan Rockström, Director at Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research & Professor in Earth System Science at the University of Potsdam
• Nicola Ranger, leads the Resilience and International Development Programme of the Environmental Change Institute at the University of Oxford
• Gabriel Felbermayr, Director of the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) in Vienna and university Professor at the Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU)
• Yasuko Kameyama, Professor at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, University of Tokyo
• Marc Zebisch, Head of the Centre for Climate Change and Transformation at Eurarc
• Dhanasree Jayaram, Assistant Professor at the Department of Geopolitics and International Relations, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, India