Transcript 585. Coutinho, SEA of a Problem

SEA of a problem: climate change
Miguel Coutinho, Raquel Pinho
and Carlos Borrego
Objectives
 Discuss the interaction between climate
change and impact assessment
 Climate change impacts
 Climate change in impact assessment
 What is the role of impact assessment?
 IA might be an important prevention tool
 Climate change must be taken into account in
IA
Assessing climate change in IA is different
from assessing other effects
 First, climate change is one of the most
significant and complex cumulative effects:
 it is due to the accumulation of many actions, each
of which has only a limited impact but all of which
together cause serious effects.
 Second, in climate change there are two sets of
impacts to contend with:
 the effect of the plan on future emissions of
greenhouse gases
 the impact/constraints set by climate change on the
plan
IPCC terminology
 Mitigation
 Majour scientific
emphasis
 Proves it!
 “climate change is
real”
 To reduce
greenhouse
emissions
 To increase CO2
storage capacity
 Adaptation
 Reaction to climate
change impacts
 Evolutionary concept
 Distribution
boundaries of species
travel North
 Can be confused
with:
 Impacts of climate
change
Impacts
An integrated framework
Challenges
• Are our Impact Assessments still valid
after the climate has changed?
• Are we prepared to estimate
environmental changes caused by our
project in a self-changing environment?
• How do we include time in our
assessment?
Future will be my project…
F = REF(k) + I1
100%
Imp1
80%
60%
40%
REF(k)
over environment
Pressure
Estado do Ambiente (capacidade de carga)
120%
20%
0%
0
2
4
6
-20%
Time (years)
Tempo (anos)
8
10
Future will be several projects
F = REF(k) +
n
∑Ip
120%
Imp1 Imp2
100%
80%
60%
40%
REF(k)
20%
0%
-20%
Imp3
environment
Pressure
Estado do over
Ambiente (capacidade
de carga)
p=1
0
2
4
6
Tempo (anos)
Time (years)
8
10
Time variable
 Business as usual (BAU)
 Moderate growth
 Optimistic scenario (2 - 3 x more)
 Pessimistic scenario
 Lower growth
 Or negative growth…
 Future might be different from BAU…
Future is multi-dimensional and dinamic
F(t) = REF(t) +
n
∑Ip(t)
120%
Imp1(t) Imp2(t)
100%
80%
60%
Ref(t)
40%
Ref(t)
20%
Imp3(t)
environment
over(capacidade
Pressure
Estado do Ambiente
de carga)
p=1
0%
0
2
4
6
-20%
Time (years)
Tempo (anos)
8
10
Climate and social systems are non-linear
 There is no reason to believe that changes
will occur in an incremental way
 Future crisis might be a result of systems that
are already stressed to the max
 An exogenous shock on an already highly
stressed system might produce a overshoot
situation.
 Thomas Homer-Dixon, 2006
Future with ruptures
t < tr ⇒F(t) = REF(t) +
n
∑Ip(t)
t > tr ⇒F(t) = RUP(t) +
p=1
Imp1(t) Imp2(t)
100%
80%
Rup(t)
60%
Ref(t)
40%
Ref(t)
20%
Imp3(t)
environment
over (capacidade
Pressure
Estado do Ambiente
de carga)
120%
0%
0
2
4
6
-20%
(anos)
TimeTempo
(years)
8
10
n
∑Ip(t)
p=1
What do we need?
 Better spatial distribution of climate change
and its effects






One World
Portugal ≠ South Korea
Portugal ≠ Sweden
Portugal ≠ Italy
Porto ≠ Lisbon
Local impacts
 Urban scale
What do we need?
 Understand the time scales of climate change
effects
 Extreme events
 Heat waves (now)
 Wet gets wetter (1-10 yrs)
 Dry gets dryier (1-10 yrs)
 Sea level rise (10-50 years)
 Weather patterns
 meteorological circulations (20-100 years)
 Greenland ice sheet melting (1000 years)
IA + Climate Change
• EIA (adaptation)
– Identify adequate mitigation measures
• SEA (adaptation + mitigation)
– Identify adequate development strategies
• SEA of Climate Change
– The new P: Problem
– Holistic approach
– Strategic approach