Shaping climate-resilient development: a framework for decision-making

This document identifies significant potential for cost-effective adaptation measures based on local climate conditions, and for building more resilient economies. The report, by the Economics of Climate Adaptation (ECA) Working Group, evaluates current and potential costs of climate change and how to prevent them by determining a location’s total climate risk – calculated by combining existing climate risks, climate change and the value of future economic development – and using a cost-benefit analysis to create a list of location specific measures to adapt to the identified risk.

The methodology was tested in localities within eight different countries (China, United States, Guyana, Mali, United Kingdom, Samoa, India and Tanzania), which together represent a wide range of climate hazards, economic impacts, and development stages. It gives decision makers and their stakeholders the facts to design a climate adaptation strategy, combining risk avoidance,loss reduction, and risk transfer measures - following a pre-emptive approach to manage total climate risk.

The ECA working group is a partnership between reinsurance group Swiss Re, consulting firm McKinsey & Co., the Global Environment Facility, ClimateWorks, the European Commission, the Rockefeller Foundation and Standard Chartered Bank.