Comparative Risk Assessment to Inform Adaptation Priorities for the Natural Environment: Observations from the First UK Climate Change Risk Assessment

Iain Brown

doi:10.3390/cli3040937

Abstract

Risk assessment can potentially provide an objective framework to synthesise and prioritise climate change risks to inform adaptation policy. However, there are significant challenges in the application of comparative risk assessment procedures to climate change, particularly for the natural environment. These challenges are evaluated with particular reference to the first statutory Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA) and evidence review procedures used to guide policy for the UK government. More progress was achieved on risk identification, screening and prioritisation compared to risk quantification. This was due to the inherent complexity and interdependence of ecological risks and their interaction with socio-economic drivers as well as a climate change. Robust strategies to manage risk were identified as those that coordinate organisational resources to enhance ecosystem resilience, and to accommodate inevitable change, rather than to meet specific species or habitats targets. The assessment also highlighted subjective and contextual components of risk appraisal including ethical issues regarding the level of human intervention in the natural environment and the proposed outcomes of any intervention. This suggests that goals for risk assessment need to be more clearly explicated and assumptions on tolerable risk declared as a primer for further dialogue on expectations for managed outcomes. Ecosystem-based adaptation may mean that traditional habitats and species conservation goals and existing regulatory frameworks no longer provide the best guide for long-term risk management thereby challenging the viability of some existing practices.

Highlights

Responding to climate change has commonly been cited as the archetypal “wicked” or even “super wicked” problem [1]
Evidence for climate change risks was summarized in terms of both its quantity and the degree of consensus between independent sources, as consistent with the use of confidence levels by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) (Figure 2, [44])
Comparative risk assessment provides a promising tool to address and prioritise the large suite of potential risks that could occur from climate change

Summary

Introduction

Responding to climate change has commonly been cited as the archetypal “wicked” or even “super wicked” problem [1] This attribution emphasizes that the scale of the challenge is framed by its diversity and complexity and that prospective solutions are time-constrained and contain circular assumptions about the discounting of the future based upon present actions. For such a challenge, conventional scientific approaches based upon a reductionist paradigm have been found to be of limited utility to decision makers because they only address a small fraction of the problem rather than issues as a whole [2,3,4]. For “wicked” problems, a conventional scientific assumption that the availability of more evidence acts to reduce uncertainty may not apply [9]

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion