Volume 28: Closing Carbon Cycles – A Transformation Process Involving Technology, Economy, and Society: Part III

Integration of climate resilience and low emission pathways: Assessing the environmental and socio-economic impacts in the energy and agriculture sectors Shivenes Shammugam, Basil Oberholzer, Andrea M. Bassi, Georg Pallaske, Stelios Grafakos

Abstract

In this paper, we present an approach and results of integrating climate impacts and climate adaptation measures in the energy and agriculture sectors in a macroeconomic top-down model. By integrating climate projections from dynamically downscaled regional climate models, we assess the impacts of changing precipitation patterns and rising temperatures on sectoral outcomes such as crop production and electricity generation, as well as on other macroeconomic socioeconomic factors such as employment and government spending for Ethiopia and Burkina Faso. The results show that neglecting climate impacts when developing long-term scenarios overestimates the evolution of economic growth in both countries. On the other hand, climate adaptation measures and adequate entitlement levels can largely offset the adverse effects of climate change in both sectors.

Keywords climate adaptation, climate impacts, long-term low emission development strategy, greenhouse gas emissions, mitigation, climate change