Abstract
Climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies tend to confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region. However, this approach ignores cross-border climate change impacts that occur remotely from the location of their initial impact and that may severely disrupt societies and livelihoods. We propose a conceptual framework and accompanying nomenclature for describing and analysing such cross-border impacts. The conceptual framework distinguishes an initial impact that is caused by a climate trigger within a specific region. Downstream consequences of that impact propagate through an impact transmission system while adaptation responses to deal with the impact propagate through a response transmission system. A key to understanding cross-border impacts and responses is a recognition of different types of climate triggers, categories of cross-border impacts, the scales and dynamics of impact transmission, the targets and dynamics of responses and the socio-economic and environmental context that also encompasses factors and processes unrelated to climate change. These insights can then provide a basis for identifying relevant causal relationships. We apply the framework to the floods that affected industrial production in Thailand in 2011, and to projected Arctic sea ice decline, and demonstrate that the framework can usefully capture the complex system dynamics of cross-border climate impacts. It also provides a useful mechanism to identify and understand adaptation strategies and their potential consequences in the wider context of resilience planning. The cross-border dimensions of climate impacts could become increasingly important as climate changes intensify. We conclude that our framework will allow for these to be properly accounted for, help to identify new areas of empirical and model-based research and thereby support climate risk management.
Highlights
In 2011 Thailand experienced the longest duration flooding event in its recorded history (158 days), resulting in more than 800 deaths and affecting 13.6 million people in the country itself (Promchote et al, 2016)
The framework focuses on how a climate impact occurring at a given location may be transmitted across borders, potentially presenting a risk to a region of interest that is remote from the initial impact, which may require a response from actors in that region
There are responses that may ameliorate the recipient risk indirectly, via a third party or external system component, for instance by influencing other actors to intervene in the impact transmission system or at the source of the initial impact or by spreading the recipient risk among additional systems
Summary
In 2011 Thailand experienced the longest duration flooding event in its recorded history (158 days), resulting in more than 800 deaths and affecting 13.6 million people in the country itself (Promchote et al, 2016). Sea-level rise, with the expectation of more frequent and severe events of this kind occurring in the future (Promchote et al, 2016) This example points more generally to the need for research on analogous cross-border climate change impacts and for their urgent consideration in adaptation planning. Conventional climate change impacts, adaptation and vulnerability studies, including national risk assessments, tend to confine their attention to impacts and responses within the same geographical region (Fig. 1). Informing adaptation planning, by offering a structure both for exploring, identifying and assessing the risks and uncertainties resulting from cross-border climate change impacts and for targeting effective responses within the wider context of enhancing resilience.
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