Support for a Workshop on Socioeconomic Scenarios for Climate Change Impact and Response Assessments. To be held in Washington, DC early 2010 for the CHDGC

National Academy Of Sciences, Washington DC

Investigators

Abstract

The effects of climate change on society depend on changes in both the climate and in society over many decades. For example, the impacts of climate change on coastal communities in 2070 depend not only on changes in sea level and storm behavior but also on changes in population distributions and land uses over the period between now and then, including voluntary responses in anticipation of future threats. This international workshop will consider the current state of the science and will develop improved methods for describing the long-term social and economic future. The purpose is to anlyze the potential impacts of climate change and consider alternative responses. Projecting more than a few decades into the future is usually treated as beyond the capability of demographers and other social scientists who work on socioeconomic and technological change. Ongoing global climate change challenges these communities to stretch beyond the usual limits of their willingness to project and to develop methods of integrated analysis that can put long-term decisions about how to respond to climate change on a solider scientific foundation. The workshop will bring together several research communities that work on parts of the problem but that are not in close coordination, as well as researchers from both high- and low-income countries who have addressed the problem in fundamentally different ways, to discuss ways to meet the challenge. It would encourage them to consider new analytical approaches and would stimulate further work and collaborations to integrate impact projections from physical models; scientifically credible descriptions of future demographic, economic, and social change; and potential mitigation and adaptation responses in anticipation of such impacts. Such integrated scenarios are important for long-range planning to reduce vulnerability to climate change. They call the attention of decision makers to the places and populations at greatest risk and help identify response options that will be robust in many plausible futures. The workshop will help advance analysis of the possible impacts of long-term global climate change and better inform responses to climate change.