Methods for addressing climate change uncertainties in project environmental impact assessments

Abstract

Climate change has important implications for assessing impacts of many types of project. If climate change is to be included in environmental assessments, then proponents must be able to incorporate its impacts and inherent uncertainties effectively into their analysis; many proponents do not possess sufficient grounding in how to accomplish this task successfully. In this paper, three basic analytical approaches to uncertainty analysis — scenario analysis, sensitivity analysis, and probabilistic analysis — are presented that proponents could use for integrating climate change induced impacts and their uncertainties into their environmental assessments, together with a framework for judging the circumstances that determine which method would be applicable. The use of these three approaches is illustrated on the environmental impacts of a run-of-the-river hydroelectric project.

Keywords:

• climate change
• global warming
• uncertainties
• environmental impact assessments
• scenario analysis
• sensitivity analysis
• probabilistic analysis