Information Sources To Support Adb Climate Risk Assessments And Management

The Asia and Pacific region is vulnerable to extreme temperatures, flooding by heavy rainfall, sea level rise, coastal erosion, and damage by tropical cyclones. This technical note provides information that supports climate risk assessment experts undertaking early stages of project development in the region. The information is grouped into four major categories: inventories of national emissions, climate risks, vulnerability, and impacts; historic weather, climate, and environmental change; regional climate change projections; and climate change impacts and adaptation. The note also identifies opportunities for capacity development in key skills such as geospatial analysis, data testing and post-processing, regional climate downscaling, and impact assessment.

This guidance provides a tool governments and development co-operation can draw on in their efforts to strengthen the resilience of human and natural systems to the impacts of climate change. It highlights three aspirations to consider when planning and implementing action to build climate resilience (country ownership; inclusiveness; and environmental and social sustainability).

This publication presents findings from a climate change risk and adaptation assessment in southern Viet Nam as part of the Water Efficiency Improvement in Drought-Affected Provinces (WEIDAP) project supported by the Asian Development Bank. It highlights new developments and key lessons on climate risk assessment that may be applied to the project design and monitoring as well as the implementation of climate adaptation measures. The WEIDAP project was developed in response to the drought that affected southern Viet Nam in 2015–2016. It focused on irrigation modernization and the integration of climate-resilient agricultural and efficient on-farm water management practices.

The Pilot Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR) is a funding window of the Climate Investment Funds, of which the Asian Development Bank (ADB) is a major partner in Asia and the Pacific, delivering investments through six country programs (Bangladesh, Cambodia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, Tajikistan, and Tonga) and one regional program for the Pacific. This study looks back at the development of PPCR funding from an ADB perspective, documents the contributions of the PPCR to country readiness for adaptation planning and climate finance, and identifies some early lessons learned from Cambodia, Nepal, and Tajikistan.

Asia and the Pacific faces significant exposure to every major type of geophysical and weather-related hazard, and the countries in the region consistently rank among the most at risk from the human and economic impacts of natural hazards. The purpose of this practical guide is to provide Asian Development Bank (ADB) project officers with a basic understanding of natural hazards, the nature and purpose of hazard mapping and disaster risk assessments, and the availability and sources of related data and information in taking disaster risk into account in project design. It aso provides guidance to ADB staff on the identification and application of data for use in integrating disaster risk considerations in country partnership strategies and individual projects.

The JPI Climate – AXIS project “Unpacking climate impact CHAINs. A new generation of action – and user-oriented climate change risk assessments” (UNCHAIN) is approaching its end date (31.12.2022), and the project is looking for an opportunity to collect its remaining scientific publications into a Research Topic. The overall objective of UNCHAIN is to improve climate change risk assessment frameworks aimed at informed decision-making and climate change adaptation action through six methodological innovations: • To also cover the possible need for long-term and large-scale efforts of societal transformation; • To refine a structured method of co-production of knowledge and integrate this into impact modelling; • To develop and test an applicable framework for analyzing how societal change can affect local climate change vulnerabilities; • To develop and test a standardized analytical framework for addressing uncertainties involved in local decision-making on climate change adaptation; • To integrate the trans-national impacts of climate change; and, • To link mitigation and adaptation in climate risk and vulnerability assessments.

This step-by-step manual describes procedures for climate change adjustments relative to extreme rainfall and local sea level estimates. The principles presented are based on worked examples discussed in the knowledge product accompanied by this manual. While the overall approach on climate change adjustment procedures and calculations are intended to be as transparent as possible, key sources of information and assumptions are open to scrutiny as some elements may be affected by rapid advancements in science and technology. It is essential for data to be periodically reviewed, in line with the latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The U.S. Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) was established in 1990 to "assist the Nation and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change."1 A key responsibility for the program is to conduct National Climate Assessments (NCAs) every 4 years.2 These assessments are intended to inform the nation about "observed changes in climate, the current status of the climate, and anticipated trends for the future." The USGCRP hopes that government entities from federal agencies to small municipalities, citizens, communities, and businesses will rely on these assessments of climate- related risks for planning and decision-making. The third NCA (NCA3) was published in 2014 and work on the fourth is beginning. The USGCRP asked the Board on Environmental Change and Society of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to conduct a workshop to explore ways to frame the NCA4 and subsequent NCA reports in terms of risks to society. The workshop was intended to collect experienced views on how to characterize and communicate information about climate-related hazards, risks, and opportunities that will support decision makers in their efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, reduce vulnerability to likely changes in climate, and increase resilience to those changes. Characterizing Risk in Climate Change Assessments summarizes the presentations and discussions from the workshop.

"The report was prepared by a Bank team comprised of Eric Dickson ... [et al.]."

Climate change represents an increasing threat to the continued development of the people, preservation of ecosystems, and economic growth of Asia and the Pacific. Mainstreaming climate risk management in all aspects of development is thus key to an effective transition to climate-resilient development pathways. ADB's climate risk management framework aims to reduce risks resulting from climate change to investment projects in Asia and the Pacific. A key step in this framework is the technical and economic valuation of climate-proofing measures. This report describes the conduct of the cost-benefit analysis of climate proofing investment projects. An important message is that the presence of uncertainty about climate change does not invalidate the conduct of the economic analysis of investment projects, nor does it require a new type of economic analysis. However, the presence of uncertainty does require a different type of decision-making process in which technical and economic expertise combine to present decision makers with the best possible information on the economic efficiency of alternative designs of investment projects.